mostly harmless books

Two tags in a row. That’s a bad sign for a blog… it screams “they don’t have anything to write about!”. But I do. About 4 books. But I also have a lot to write at work, which is keeping me from blogging here.

So this is a tag from Larry again. And it’s that obnoxiuos one that’s been traveling the Romanian blogosphere too (sorry :P). But I felt that my version was a bit twisted so I had to post.

What you get when you tag a foreigner is… you guessed it… foreign books! Even more so since I am at my boyfriend’s place, who has more Romanian than English books (and the English shelf is furthest away from where I am sitting now). So, I am supposed to grab the nearest book and turn to page 123. Write down the fifth sentence, post it, and then tag 5 others to do this.
- Nu-mi mai pot permite sa pierd timpul, a zis, coborand din camioneta.

And now the short lesson in Romanian :P Dialogues always start with a “-”, not inverted commas, and the sentence means “I can’t afford to waste time, she said, getting off the truck.”

It’s from Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick, in one of the Year’s Best anthologies by Gardner Dozois. And I’m sorry to say that the book wasn’t near the bed because I was reading it, but because I used it as a laptop stand (it overheats and I have to prop it up in order to properly ventilate).

Since I can’t find the time to write about the 4-5 books I’ve read since the one in the last post, here’s a tag from Larry.

1. What is the name of the book you currently are reading/are contemplating reading?
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. Because I saw half the movie and it was great, and then I went to Ukraine. And people keep saying he writes good stuff, so why not? So far, so good.

2. Do you picture Vogons being cat or dog lovers? Why so?
Whichever tastes better.
[Fun tidbit - well, fun for me. There are some mobs in World of Warcraft (in Karahkzan, for those in the know) who have a spell called "Bad Poetry" that puts you to sleep.]

3. Would you read a Klingon version of The Little Prince and/or the Bible? Why or why not?
I don’t see the purpose of making up a language in such detail. So I wouldn’t read anything in Klingon or Quenya or Sindarin or whatever. Really, learn something useful.

4. What foreign language would you like to learn that you don’t already know? And would you speak it to a lover, a religious person, or to a horse?
French (first and foremost, learn how to speak it; then, remember all the grammar and vocabulary I forgot) and German (since I find myself in Vienna quite often, visiting a good friend, and it sucks not being able to understand anything…). I am planning to start classes for one of these in autumn.

I would speak it to whatever natives I can find, if they are nice enough to try to understand my beginner sentences.

5. What author are you thankful is sadly underreviewed on the web today?
Since I don’t like reading reviews… I have no idea.
(I tend to change my opinions if I read other people’s, so I never read reviews before reading a book to avoid getting an impression before hand).

I’m always on the lookout for English books I can borrow, so when my friend and I ended up in the Peace Corps volunteer lounge in Kyiv, Ukraine, I took advantage. One of the books that caught my eyes was Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. I love post-apocalyptic fiction, so I regularly look for more books on the subject, and this one was on several lists. But it’s not a typical end-of-the-world novel: it’s got a Christian message.

How does that work? Well, the basic plotline is that the Rapture comes. Real Christians get taken to Heaven, the rest stay on Earth. It starts up good: among those taken are airplane pilots, car drivers, administration and law people, so things get out of control in an appropriate apocalyptic fashion. We’ve got a couple of pretty interesting characters (an airplane pilot and his daugther, a journalist, a flight attendant) who are mostly skeptic about this whole Rapture business, since they are not believers.

And then… it starts to get preachy. (more…)

[Part 1]
[Part 2]

Nancy Kress - Inertia. Beggars in Spain (the short story) was one of my first SF reads and; this year, when I read Beggars and Choosers, I wasn’t expecting much, but I loved it. Inertia… not so much. I’ve seen reviewers name this as their favorite and I can see why: original idea, moral dilemmas… But something was missing for me, I can’t put my finger on it. I didn’t care about the characters or their fate, and the dilemma wasn’t interesting enough to make up for it.

Elizabeth Bear - And the Deep Blue Sea. “Reminiscent - without being derivative - of Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley“ would have been enough to convince me to read it. (more…)

[Part 1]
Jack McDevitt - Never Despair. One of my favorites. In a distant future, a diminishing group of people tries to find a legendary cache of knowledge left by the “old ones” before civilization collapsed. That premise alone is enough for me to become very interested, but the way it is explored makes it even better: far-future woman talking to a hologram of Winston Churchill after she takes shelter in some ruins that accidentaly house some computer that can still work. I love it when future characters meet people we are very familiar with. Even though we never find out if they reach their goal, we are left with hope.

Cory Doctorow - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth. At first, this sounded like another cyberpunk story, and I don’t like cyberpunk. But it turned out to probably be my favorite. (more…)