Old Man's War

Author: John Scalzi

It’s been a while since I’ve read hard sci-fi, and perhaps as long since I’ve read military sci-fi. Old Man's War is both, and succeeds as both, at least as far as I can tell.

It is the story of a man who, on his 75th birthday, joins a galaxy-spanning military service. This is standard practice, and those who join: a) don’t know why only the old are recruited and b) know they can never again return to Earth. Indeed, no one on Earth knows any details about human extra-solar colonization, except that it is occurring.

It’s a good story, fairly well told. Data dump expositions are inevitable, I suppose, and are handled with only modest awkwardness. Plus, the data dumps contain new (to me; see warning above) sci-fi elements, so that makes them all the more bearable. The rest is fresh and exciting, with at least two characters you care about.

It is told in first person, which gets to me because almost all sci-fi seems to be so, now-a-days (except when it’s in an even more annoying second person; I’m looking at you, Charles Stross). But I'm sure you can get over that.

Plain Truth

Author: Jodi Picoult

This book sucks. It consists entirely of an Amish girl going, "No, I didn't have a baby, no baby, nope ... okay, I had the baby, but I didn't kill it, no way ... maybe I did kill it ... no, really, I didn't ... okay, I did ... but not really." Also, the author tries to convince you that Amish people are awesome. Perhaps they are, but Picoult overdoes it.

The last quarter of the book describes the trial of said Amish girl in great detail. However, since every single piece of evidence and witness has already been introduced by that point, the author spends a hundred pages simply restating things that she's already told you.

Carom Shot

Author: J. J. Partridge

This book's protagonist is a total Mary Sue. The plot is not so much as plot as it is a device for the author to imagine himself in various situations. The title reflects the protagonist's skill at pool, which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.

This book will mainly appeal to residents of Providence, who may enjoy recognizing various parts of the town in the text, and aging college professors who like to imagine themselves very fit and wealthy, solving crimes and sleeping with a much younger woman of exotic origins.

Rant

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

This was the first Chuck Palahniuk novel I read, and it was much less graphic than I expected it to be. However, it was indeed as confusing as I expected it to be. I had heard that he has a thing for unreliable narrators, and this proved to be the case (I think) in this novel as well.

It was an excellent book for a flight -- not overly long, with a gripping plot and stuff to puzzle over afterwards.

Pudd'nhead Wilson

Author: Mark Twain

I've been a bit remiss about updating this blog in a while, partly because I haven't been reading much, and partly because I don't know what to say about a Mark Twain book. Of course it's a good book.

Perhaps I can comment that the book is, in fact, not very much about the title character at all. It containes, as do most of MT's books, quite a lot of social commentary; in this case, not only about social inequality, but on why it has so much inertia.

So ends my attempt to comment intelligently on a classic. Read it if you like.