amethyst73 | Books I've read recently

When I caught the flu early in July (which was quickly followed by a nasty bout of bronchitis), I ended up reading a lot more than I usually do. Here are the books I’ve read since early July with a quick blurb about each.

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother: Published in 2007, Little Brother takes a look at where post-9/11 government hypersecurity measures could easily lead, and the fight of a handful of high school students against monitoring, fear-mongering, and secret detentions. With a golf-playing U.S. President and a Presidential adviser whose initials are K.R., it’s no secret who Doctorow is pointing his finger at, but with the NSA still such a presence in our lives, the finger is still pointing. WARNING: Do not read if you live in the Bay Area and are running a fever, as you may become confused about what is real and what is not.

John Scalzi, Old Man’s War: In the future, the Earth is overcrowded, but if you’re American and 70, you can help solve the problem: get off the planet and fight for possession of interstellar colonies - oh, and did we mention you get a brand-new, younger, fitter body into the bargain? The book would be plenty of fun simply following a handful of new recruits from a third-person perspective, but the first-person perspective of John Perry raises the narrative to a different place. Perry’s reflections on what it’s like to be young again, his keen observations on human and alien life, and his deep and abiding love for his deceased wife make Old Man’s War a great deal more than your average sci-fi adventure.

Wil Wheaton, Just A Geek: People my age know Wil Wheaton first and foremost as the actor who played Wesley Crusher, the teenager on Star Trek: The Next Generation. This memoir, consisting largely (but by no means entirely) of blog entries Wheaton wrote over a period of years after he left ST:TNG, in which he got married, tried to get new acting jobs, and eventually both figured out what he was going to do next, and came to terms with his past as Wesley. It’s short, well-written, and interesting.

John Scalzi, Android’s Dream: I enjoyed Old Men’s War enough that when I was done, I felt like I had a Scalzi-shaped hole in my book list, so I got Android’s Dream out of the library. Android’s Dream is what might have resulted if every single one of the disparate people, places, and organizations in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had a key part to play in a convoluted plot and its resolution (assuming HGTTG had a plot to speak of... <ducks>). While I missed the intimacy of Old Man’s War, I couldn’t help appreciating the delicate construction of Android’s Dream, because it’s just so well put together.

Robin McKinley, Pegasus: AAGH IT’S ONLY HALF A STORY AND SHE ENDS ON A CLIFFHANGER AND THE OTHER BOOK ISN’T DUE TO COME OUT TILL 2014 AAGH

At first glance, Pegasus is a book about a twee princess and her ~~lover~~ pegasus being twee. Princesses... pegasi... the standard early-teen girl’s fantasy, right? (I will freely admit to wanting a pegasus myself.) But there’s a lot more going on behind the wish-fulfillment drapery: a really good exploration of what pegasi might actually be like if they were real creatures and how they might think and behave as a result, and what happens when cultures as disparate as pegasi and stock western medieval humans meet.