racketboy.com

racketboy wrote:I'm almost 1/2 way through 1984...
Started out a little slow, but it's been picking up...

Is this your first time reading it?

It is a great book but I do not know that it picks up. It is not action oriented or anything. Brave New World is in a similar vein and while not action oriented either it feels a bit faster.

Ack wrote:

pepharytheworm wrote: I currently just started Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I found the trilogy at a goodwill. Its great so far.

Trilogy? Ender's storyline is four books, and Bean's is another...what, three?

Anyway, general consensus from the folks I know who've read beyond Ender's Game is that the first book is very different from the rest of the series. My girlfriend enjoyed Speaker for the Dead, but said it really didn't feel like the first. I'm curious what your impression will be when you get there.

Meanwhile, I'm plugging away at a collection of horror stories by Robert E. Howard. I'm an enormous fan of his Conan stories and enjoy most of his work, though admittedly there are a few of his stories I don't care for. Oh well, after this I might seek out the collections of his Kull stories, and I believe there's one of his Bran Mak Morn stuff.

These are all the books that are in the Ender's universe
Ender's Game (1985)
Speaker for the Dead (1986)
Xenocide (1991)
Children of the Mind (1996)
Ender's Shadow (1999)
Shadow of the Hegemon (2001) -
Shadow Puppets (2002)
First Meetings (2002) - short story collection
Shadow of the Giant (2005)
A War of Gifts: An Ender Story (2007)
Ender in Exile (2008)
Shadows in Flight (forthcoming)

I actually picked up all these books but one, that goodwill had tons of Sci-Fi books. I thought it was only the first three that were the actual main Ender story arc. It is Children of the mind to which I though was one of the branching books.

Wow, he kept going after I stopped paying attention.

Anyway, from what I've heard, Xenocide and Children of the Mind were originally supposed to be one book, but he just kept going, so that might be what you thinking. Or I could be horribly wrong. Either way, cool beans.

I finished reading A Scanner Darkly last night. It was good, I thought. I found the way Fred/Arctor/Bruce's mind kept splitting more and more as the story went on interesting. Dick didn't quite nail what 1994 was like, writing back in 1977, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as Back to the Future 2.

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus. Actually, I still have a few chapters left but it's not a thick book. It really takes grammar down to the core essentials and doesn't over complicate things

Finished dome
pretty ordinary ending to be honest.

Just finished reading All quiet on the western front. I highly recommend it.

I read William Gibson's Neuromancer recently. It is the grand-daddy of cyber punk. It was exceptionally cool in its hacking, idiosyncratic jargon, and futurism. He largely predicted cyberspace before it happened (in fact, he coined the term). He has a very spartan writing style which can be hard to follow, but it keeps your imagination active and keeps you reading fast and thinking through what's happening.

I also read Ready Player One recently, but I've already discussed that in another thread.

Ack wrote:Wow, he kept going after I stopped paying attention.

Anyway, from what I've heard, Xenocide and Children of the Mind were originally supposed to be one book, but he just kept going, so that might be what you thinking. Or I could be horribly wrong. Either way, cool beans.

You might be thinking of the Shadows in Flight/Shadows Alive books.

Xenocide and Children of the Mind were always going to be two books, - but I could be wrong as well, lol. There's also another book that just came out, I think it's called Earth Unaware: The First Formic War. It's a Mazer Rackham book, rather than an Ender/Bean book, but it takes place in the Ender-verse. Haven't read it tho.

If you like pre-nutzoid Orson Scott Card, check out the Homecoming series. It's 5 books, the first 4 which are great! The 5th is awful, and better off ignored.


I'm currently reading World War Z, and it seems a lot like Robopocalypse, being that it's all different accounts, relating the entire story. BTW Robopocalypse was pretty good. Kinda simple, but pretty fun to read.


@JT: I started reading Ready Player One and I had to stop. I'm not commenting on the story here, as I never finished the book. I got a couple chapters in and was so annoyed by the overabundance of name dropping. I kept thinking "OK dude, we get it. You grew up in the 80s with a NES and PacMan. Get on with it." It felt like reading this:

"So I got up and turned off my DARTH VADER alarm clock, and pulled back my TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES bedsheets. I checked my email, which was [email protected]. I got an invitation to my friends 80s party, to which I would obviously attend dressed as VOLTRON. I decided to log into my school account, using my usual password: WHATISTHEMATRIX. After that, I played some DONKEY KONG on my GAMEBOY...."

It's like the guy was just relying on namedropping and nostalgia for people to like his book. I dont know, maybe the story was great, I'm totally not saying "only sheep liked that book", but it just seemed like he set out to drop as many nostalgic names as he possibly could, and succeeded.

I read 1984 in sixth grade. Pretty alright, missed the metaphorical stuff pretty much thought. Enders hame I read in third grade, that one I still read again every now and then pretty great.
I'm currently read All the Wrong Questions by Lemony Snicket and the Phantom Tollbooth.