April and May 2015 Reading List

It's been a harrowing past couple of months. The loss of a loved family member unsurprisingly dampens any desire to distract oneself through reading.  Prior to these events I did get a bunch of books read and towards the end of May I started up again.  But my comments on these books I am only just getting to now.

1. The Magician King by Lev Grossman
2. The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
3. Founding Brothers by Joseph J Ellis
4. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
5. Heft by Liz Moore
6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

 I have to admit its been some time since I read The Magician by Grossman.  I found that similar in concept to the freshman Potter novel where the whole world that is Hogwarts needed to be set up.  For that reason I wasn't overly impressed with the first of Grossman's novels.  However I had purchased the 2nd book in the series so I decided to read it.  I'm glad I did because I loved it! While the plot seems like any other fantasy adventure on the surface of things, it reveals an undercurrent of much more sinister goings on.  And the many references to pop culture idioms by the characters is just hilarious.  I've already bought the 3rd in the series and can't wait to read that now.

The Speed of Dark is a near future scifi story about a highly functioning autistic that is given the opportunity to be "cured" of his condition.  Moon does a good job describing the pros and cons of such a choice.  However aside from this interesting speculation there isn't much else to the storyline that compels the reader.

Founding Brothers is a book I read half of recently and then forgot all about it.  So this month I completed it when it turned up on my pile.  This piece explores the premise that after the war of independence had been fought and won, the future of the fledgling USA was anything but assured.  So many other revolutions have not been sustainable throughout history and the US one had similar challenges.  Ellis walks us through the events of roughly the first 30-40 years following the victory and identifies the challenges that Washington, Adams and Jefferson faced.  I found the accounting fascinating and informative and my attention never wavered.

Ender in Exile seems largely superfluous -- but I read it anyway being the die hard that I am.  It seems safe to assume that the careful reader of Speaker for the Dead inferred most of the content of Exile from the narrative.  Its nice to have the actual content validated but I found it mostly unnecessary.

 Heft is familiar sort of story based on an unfamiliar protagonist.  Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and has been confined to his house for quite a number of years.  Without giving away too much else the story created by Moore defines an unusual family based around Arthur's re-emergence into the world.  Things don't go as smoothly as you might expect in a "movie version" of the story.  The book also ends just when you might think that things are getting interesting.  Perhaps there's a sequel in that but I found it to end just at the right point.

Aside from A Christmas Carol, I've never read much Dickens.  I know, right?  Reading A Tale of Two Cities was therefore surprising in its familiarity - like I've read it before.  Sure, some of the lines are so familiar to us that they're almost cliches.  And yes, this is obviously a book written well over 100 years ago so it is a little more challenging because of it.  But I found Dickens straightforward,  entertaining and gratifying.  I have more on my shelf so now I am looking forward to it.

At first I thought A Dog's Purpose was just cutesy.  And then in the first few pages the protagonist dog died! What?  Fortunately the dog is reborn again and the story continues.  Enough of the spoilers.  As the story unfolds and you wonder where it's headed next you ultimately realize at the end what the dog's "purpose" is and you look back over the story and feel glad for having read it.  At least I did.  Mr Cameron has found the right combination to pull on your heart strings (being a dog owner myself).  For goodness sakes, don't make this into a movie -- it's fine the way it is.

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