Another round of words printed on paper

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book blog. I’ll catch you up:

I read Xenocide and Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (Books 3 and 4 of the Ender series). The books and series are very good, although this science fiction is pretty heavy on the fiction and a little light on the science. Fanciful ideas and I guess looking at the series as a whole, it’s more of a morality play / character study. I discovered in the authors notes at the end of the fourth book that Orson Scott Card is a Mormon. I guess that explains the somewhat strange flavor these books had.

I also read Fantastic Voyage by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman. I may have mentioned this one a while ago. It’s a good read on the latest medical and scientific knowledge on healthy living and anti-aging. Most of the details in the book are pretty solid, based on strong scientific evidence, and generally godo advice. There were a few things that seemed on the dubious side (like drinking several glasses of Alkalinized water each day….ooookaaaaay….). Still, excellently written and engaging. I recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. As always with this kind of book, keep the bullshit-detectors on full-steam.

My bro gave me a copy of Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. I struggled to get through this one, even though It is short. I had trouble getting into it, and it felt like it was over before I could. It wasn’t bad, but was not nearly as fun as his later works.

Several weeks ago, I walked over to the local supermarket to grab a few things. I was looking for some stationary, and I walked through the isle with the mass-market paperbacks. I don’t normally peruse supermarket bookshelves, other than to amuse myself with how the irony of how there are so many people out there that are literate enough to read books, but resort to such spending their time reading all that drivel. Oddly, a book on the shelf caught my eye. It was a sci-fi called Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, an author I had never heard of. Risky. The synopsis sounded intriguing. Being the elitist bastard that I am, I actually felt embarrassed buying a book from a supermarket. But I’m glad I did. It was a decent novel. Nothing orgasmically spectacular, but a good solid and well structured novel. It had one of those trendy scrambled-in-time plot lines where the story is revealed in small out-of-order pieces. I tend to enjoy books that don’t spoon feed the reader.