Our recent family read was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. I had read this book back in the late '80s or early '90s, so was unsure how I'd feel about it this time. When I re-read Ringworld after decades, or Stranger in a Strange Land, I was amazed at how terribly written they were and wondered what I had seen in them when I was in my 20's.
Spoilers:
Ender's Game was not those. It was well written, albeit still for a different audience: males in the 13-25 year age group, I'd say. I enjoyed reading it, but all along thought it could have been just as good if the candidate-kids weren't so young. Ender begins his training at 6 years old, as if that's normal (after all, his entire launch group are all the same age), and he saves all humankind at the age of 12. Why not add a few more years? Start them at 9 if you needed to get them before puberty, say, or before bad habits settle in. My wife countered that due to the invasion fleet's timing, they had to grab Ender at 6 years old. I'm not quite sure: seems all the older kids at Battle School had been there since they were 6, as well. And the reader was to assume that coming behind Ender were other kids who could have saved humanity. (Bean, perhaps?)
While I didn't remember much of the book, I did remember some of the 2013 movie. Thus it was no big reveal to me at the end. I did, however, remember from reading it how Ender later becomes Speaker for the Dead. No, I probably won't read that one, unless our book club picks it later.
Spoilers done.
While reading that one, I listened to 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke.
Spoilers below:
I had never read this book. I had read his follow-on, 2010, years ago, and of course loved the movie (Helen Mirren!), but this book and movie (1968, Stanley Kubrick, dr) I'd never read nor seen. I have an image in my head from my youth, early 1970's, of a waiting room or office in a space station (I think my parents were watching it on TV), but that's about it for the movie.
This book was fun, and a bit different from what I think the movie was or definitely what the 2010 movie showed: the final arrival of the Discovery was not Jupiter, as 2010 implies, but Saturn. That's where the action stops. That's where Bowman sees the monolith and notes "it's full of stars."
Looking at the Wiki for the film, the action stops at Jupiter. In the book, Bowman's partner, Frank Poole, is knocked off Discovery and set adrift toward Saturn, never to return. Looks like the film took a different direction. I'll have to watch the movie one of these days.
Spoilers no mo'.
Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth is still my favorite of his. 100% recommended.
Couple notes about the Audible version: The actual author introduces the story! So that's kind of unique. But also, this Audible version continually restarted me at chapter 1. I'd listen to it at night, set the timer for 30 minutes, then in the morning in my car ready to drive to work, it would be back at chapter 1 again. First time it was a fluke (Did I forget to set the timer last night?), but when it happened a second time, I contacted Audible. A nice chatbot/possible human had me remove it from my phone and redownload it and voila, fixed. Until the next morning. I decided to take a screenshot whenever I was done. Then later just Remove from device and redownload every time, because for some reason it remembered where I was when I did that. Thankfully it wasn't too long (9 hours? 6? Can't recall.), but this was the first such problem I've ever had with an Audible book. Caveat auditor!
Two pretty good, and classic, sci-fi reads lately. Currently I'm reading through Empires of the Word, by Nicholas Ostler. I'd read this book many years ago and used one of the author's conclusions as the basis for my thesis Russian Language Prestige in the States of the Former Soviet Union, available for free on the internet, you know, if you're having trouble sleeping. The author was so kind and supportive when I reached out to him in 2007 and asked him questions about his conclusions and told him my proposed thesis question. (I'm happy to note also that my thesis has been cited in multiple actual books by actual researchers. w00t!)
Fiction-wise, I'm reading another Victor LaValle (I'm obsessed), recently published, called Lone Women. Of course, it is great so far.
I'm also reading The Copyeditor's Handbook for my Copyediting class with UCSD.
