Category: reading

The joy of “trash” fiction

I just finished reading Drew Karpyshyn’s Star Wars book, Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. I haven’t read a Star Wars book since Timothy Zahn finished his first trilogy, the one with Thrawn in it. Anyhow, I like the Star Wars universe, it’s fun but it’s also incredibly shallow in ways. I’m not saying this to knock on Star Wars, it is a problem that most genre (sci-fi/fantasy) books and settings have. All the good guys are called light and look good and all the bad guys have called dark and are ugly, the exception to this is for evil women who are either young and beautiful or old and ugly. I think my readers are smart enough to pick out the sexism inherent in that fact. Anyhow I enjoyed the book it was quick, entertaining and about as far as you can get from what I have been reading (see my reading and what I recommend lists).

Of course the book suffers from what I just mentioned the story centers around a young man who names himself “bane” and is bald and pale evil. He begins his training in a Sith academy so that one day he can join the “brotherhood of darkness” and now he is embracing his evil. The book is good except when it gets bogged down in this completely cliche, shallow, parody of ethics and morality… Very few people ever see themselves as evil, they almost always believe what they are doing is good and right… I wholeheartedly believe that there are evil people, but they are rare, it is usually good, or misguided people doing evil things. I wish genre fiction could get past this so that great stories in fantastic places can have realistic people living in them as opposed to the cardboard cut outs we usually see…

Um, not going to put this on my “I Recommend” list…

But I did want to share my thoughts on the book with you!

Adventures in Paranormal Investigations by Joe Nickell – A great, if brief, collection of Mr. Nickell’s studies of various paranormal happenings across the globe in the service of Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. The book will not convince true believers of their errors but skeptics will find his tales light and entertaining reading. Several times I would have liked a more thorough study or investigation done, or perhaps more of the author’s thoughts and insights… I guess we’ll have to wait for Mr. Nickell’s next “real” book for that!

You’ll always be able to read my review of it over at Amazon.com

Towers of Shame – Books

book tower

Here it is, all the books that have been stacking up around here. The ones I didn’t get to this year. I plan on reading them next year, of course this is just the base of the tower as I’m constantly collecting new books that will increase it’s height… *sigh*

I better get to work!

For those who cannot read the spines I’ve listed the titles.

On the left from the top: The Ten Books of Architecture, Reading like a Writer, The Wars of God and Men, A Wizard of Earthsea, The War of Art, Ilium, Lord Darcy, Underworld, Fingerprints of the God, Jesus of Nazareth, The Prince of the Marshes, Books on Trial, God’s Gold, Mister B. Gone, The Wolf of Wall Street, Day of Empire, Evil Genes, Blacklisted by History.

On the right from the top: Camber the Heretic, Mistborn, Saint Camber, Gaia, Across the Nightingale Floor, The Great Upheaval, Death and Burial in the Roman World, The World is Flat, The Human Touch, Atheism, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Breaking the Spell, The Works of Josephus, The Works of Philo.

Another book finished, only dozens more to go…

So here we go another book in the vast pile of “have read”, a pile that at this point is beginning to rival Springfield’s tire pile. This one was Larry Niven’s Ringworld, a book that seems to be part of a series I’m unaware of. The book mentions all sorts of things that are never explained, which helps create a sense of place, makes it seem more real. At the same time, I don’t like it when authors drop little bits and pieces of things and then never explain them. I have a feeling if I read more of Niven’s work much of these non-sequiturs would make more sense. Also the book looks like it could have used a little more editing. There was more than one occasion where the transition didn’t work and I was left scratching my head at what in the world he was trying to say. I’d have to stop and re-read the passage more than once. This is not good as anyone who writes or reads knows, it takes the reader right out of the story, destroying all that hard earned suspension of disbelief the writer had worked so hard to create. The subject matter was fascinating though, Niven talks about numbers so large that it’s almost impossible to conceive of them. As far as I can tell as well Niven’s science is up to par as well, but then I’m not much of a science guy, so… He seems to have covered a lot of the technical difficulties though one would face building an artifact the size of the Ringworld. A fun read one I’d recommend to those interested in the hard sci-fi genre.

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