Before posting my TBR list for 2012, I want to revisit my 2011 followup post. Due to a deafening roar of demand, I have written a bit about each book and what I thought of it. Spoiler alert: I liked them all!
Harry Turtledove — How Few Remain
The first novel in Turtledove’s Southern Victory alternate history series. Basically: What if Robert E. Lee’s messenger had never lost Special Order 191, the details of the South’s invasion which Union soldiers found and then used to stop the army’s march? What if the Confederacy had then gone on to win the Civil War? This reads like I imagine any historical novel might — I could see the events in this series being straight up historical fiction. I went on to read the next novel in the series, which details WWI in this altered timeline. I own the rest of the series and hope to revisit it this year.
Alan’s father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine—he kept a roof over their heads and she kept their clothes clean. His brothers were: a dead man, a trio of nesting dolls, a fortune teller, and an island. He only had two or three family portraits, but he treasured them, even if outsiders who saw them often mistook them for landscapes. There was one where his family stood on his father’s slopes, Mom out in the open for a rare exception, a long tail of extension cords snaking away from her to the cave and the diesel generator’s three-prong outlet. He hung it over the mantel, using two hooks and a level to make sure that it came out perfectly even.
Walter M. Miller Jr. — A Canticle for Leibowitz
After a devastating nuclear war, a Catholic monastery in the American Southwest devotes itself to preserving what scientific knowledge can be saved from pre-war humanity, through the rebuilding of civilization over the centuries following the war. Quite well-written, especially as this is the only novel Miller published in his lifetime. Notable for presenting Christianity mostly favorably in a science fiction. That was nice. A sequel was written, but published posthumously some thirty years after Canticle; I hope to read it soon. I hear Miller became disenchanted with the Church over the intervening decades and it shows, so we shall see how it turned out.
Cory Doctorow — Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
This book was… interesting. Two plots – one about setting Toronto up with a free, collectively-run public WiFi net. The other about Alan’s [or Adam's or Adrian's] less… conventional… history. I’ve shared paragraph from early in the first chapter to the right.
Scott Westerfeld — Uglies (The Uglies)
Excellent YA dystopian fiction. A few centuries in the future, humans mostly live in environmentally-friendly, post-scarcity cities. An age-based caste system divides the children and young adults from the rest of society; at the age of sixteen, young Uglies undergo cosmetic surgery to become Pretties and join the city proper, where they spend most of their time on partying and other recreational activities. But all [dun dun dunnnnn] is not as it seems.
Judith Lindbergh — The Thrall’s Tale
The Viking colonization of Greenland, as told from a slaves point of view. Very much not your typical rollicking Viking fiction of raids and battle-glory; a good counterpoint to The Long Ships, one of my favorite books and another that you should check out. The most interesting aspect of this book [to me] was actually the writing style. Lindbergh writes almost as if this is a poem without line breaks; there is a fascinating rhythm to her prose that had me nodding my head with the beat as I read.
Cormac McCarthy — The Road
Not a single quotation mark anywhere! The writing style was unusual enough to keep my attention, and the father’s relationship with his son is heartwarming. A good post-apocalyptic world without the all-out action feel you get from post-apocalyptic movies.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Aldous Huxley — Brave New World
This book could easily be read as a straight metaphor for modern American society. Americans, like the residents of Brave New World, tend to live in a panem et circenses fashion: with plentiful food and quick-access entertainment and consumerism, who really cares what’s really happening in the world? Worried about the future? Take another dose of soma or watch the latest American Idol.
Frank Herbert — Dune
One of those seminal science fiction works which seem to be required reading [literally: my sister-in-law is required to read it for her science fiction literature class], yet which I managed to reach the age of 27 without picking up. I am glad I finally got around to it; as with much good scifi, Dune paints a broad, beautiful landscape of a setting for its events. Also, the “Litany Against Fear” is one of those little poetic… things… that I love about good science fiction/space opera.
Ursula K. Le Guin — Rocannon’s World
A good medieval fiction — set on another planet in an interstellar society in the midst of a civil war. The first novel of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, I mainly picked this up to work my way up to the more famous books in the series [The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed], but I ended up really enjoying Rocannon’s World and the other short novels leading up to the heavy hitters. In fact, I have been struggling to get immersed in Left Hand, but I had no trouble at all whipping through the preceding books with joy.
