The Avid Reader - January 2011

I read many book each month. I rate them according to how much enjoyment I got out of them. Feel free to comment on my comments.

The Complete Peanuts Collection Boxed Set 1971-1974

Charles Schulz was a genius. For almost 50 years, with only a 5 week vacation after he had a stroke, he put out a daily comic strip. I have been a fan of the Peanuts, and I thought I had seen all the strips. I was wrong. I hadn’t seen a vast majority of these strips. I had not known that at one point, Snoopy had attacked the cat next door when he thought that Woodstock had been caught by him. I had not seen the series where Peppermint Patty was a sheep for the Christmas play, or where Lucy and Linus’s little brother Rerun is born. All in all, I really enjoyed reading the 4 years worth of daily comics. I give the collection an A.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Dan Brown is a master at writing action adventures dealing with conspiracies. As opposed to his previous two novels featuring This one takes place in Washington, DC. It was kind of fun having been to many of the locations mentioned in the book. How believable is it? Well, not so much. It was a little on the ridiculous side. There were actions that seemed out of character, and there was a lot of action that really made no sense to me. The big mystery of who the main antagonist was did not seem like a mystery to me. I figured it out almost as soon as it was introduced. It was an adequate read, but I still think The Da Vinci Code is probably Brown’s best work. I give The Lost Symbol a C+.

Tatooine Ghost by Troy Denning

Tatooine Ghost was a very interesting Star Wars book to read. It took the disparate parts of the Expanded Universe of Star Wars and linked them all together in an effective storyline. The focus of the story is on the newly married Han Solo and Leia, and it deals with Leia trying to come to terms with the fact that Darth Vader was her father. It dealt with her finding out that once upon a time, Vader was a sweet little boy by the name of Anakin Skywalker, and that he wasn’t always evil. It ties together the events of the two sets of films, as well as tying a bunch of loose storylines together from the novels. Parts of the storyline were a bit on the weak side, like the motivation of Anakin’s childhood friend to steal something that both the New Republic and the Empire want, and revisiting the old Pod Race grounds seemed a bit much, but overall, it was one of the better written Star Wars books. I give Tatooine Ghost an A-.

The Mummy or Ramses the Damned by Anne Rice

Anne Rice is best known for her Vampire chronicles, but she did take a stab at the Mummy legend as well. I enjoyed the book. Whereas in most of the Mummy stories, the evil mummy awakens from its curse and goes around killing the people woke it up, here the sun-activated mummy is woken up and sees a murder. The story is filled with mystery, character moments, history, romance, murder, and madness. This is actually a Mummy story I would like to see made into a movie – of course, without too many changes to the story (filmmakers: don’t try to ‘improve’ the story of a good book too much! I have to admit, the closer a movie is to the book, the better, 90% of the time, I like it, but that’s a discussion for another time and place…) The Mummy or Ramses the Damned is a fun read, although I’d rate it for more mature readers. I give it a B+.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

In my continuing effort to read the classics, I did pull my copy of Jane Eyre off my shelf. I got bogged down it. It was more than just the language, which really wasn’t that hard or archaic. I got bogged down in Jane’s sense of melodrama. It’s the same complaint I have with Twlight’s Bella, although Jane has a lot more reason to feel bad than Bella ever did. The first several chapters were as depressing an up-bringing as any of Dicken’s characters. The next several are the famous romance of Jane and Rochester and the classism that is rampant in their world. The story moves to Jane dealing with the people who abused her as a child, and then back to Rochester where the hidden secret is revealed. Then, in the most unlikely coincidence of the book, she accidentally finds her cousins that she didn’t really know she had. She does end up independently wealthy and returns to Rochester as an equal. When I was reading, I was thinking, ‘oh good grief.’ I went away from Jane Eyre with a very ambivalent feeling, but the longer I was away from it, the more I liked it. I like the fight for individualism, and the coming into a marriage as an equal. For the time it was written in, it was very radical. Imagine: a woman with power over her own fate. Coming out of 1847, it really ahead of its time. As I was reading it, I would have given it a C+, but now, with the time to absorb and reflect on it, I give Jane Eyre a whole grade higher at a B+.

Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card

Red Prophet is the second in the Tales of Alvin Maker books. Red Prophet starts by focusing in on the Native Americans involved in the story of this alternate world where magic or ‘knacks’ exist. It focuses in on their version of the Native American hero Tecumseh (Ta Kumsaw) and his brother Tensquatawa (Tenskwa Tawa) are point of view characters as well as William Henry Harrison (in our world, the 9^th President), LaFayette, Napoleon, and riverman Mike Fink. The two main characters, however, are Alvin, of course, and his brother Measure. The story deals with the white vs. red of the early stages of the press west, and how it would be different if people had direct magic (both white and red). It is a fun read; I actually like it better than the first book in the series. I do recommend this series. I give Red Prophet an A-.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

Heir to the Empire is the first book of a Star Wars trilogy of books by Timothy Zahn. Zahn introduces a new threat to the Star Wars Expanded Universe (mentioned in the chronologically earlier but published later book Tatooine Ghost). It is very well written, well thought out, and, in all reality, it is the first in the trilogy that all other Star Wars books had to aspire to. Zahn’s various characters – Grand Admiral Thrawn, Captain Paelleon, Bothan council member Borsk Fay’la, Talon Karrde, and Mara Jade, former ‘Hand of the Emperor’ with dark jedi training.All of these characters become very important to the stories of the Expanded Universe. If you are going to read a series of Star Wars books, Heir to the Empire and the following two books in the trilogy would be the ones to read. Heir receives an A.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Individually, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are excellent writers. Some of my favorite books and series come from these two authors. Put them together and you get an amazingly irreverent and silly look at the potential apocalypse. It takes the book of Revelation, the end of the world, and turns it on its head. The first two characters introduced are the demon who took the form of a snake (Crowley) and one of the angels who guarded the Garden of Eden (Aziraphale). These two live among the humans for the entire existence of humanity. The book has many asides where the authors write directly to the audience. I have to admit that sometimes the directness of it pulled me out of the book. One of the main characters of the book was about a witch/prophetess from the 16^th Century Agnes Nutter who was trying to describe what was going on in the future from her point of view. It was entertaining reading the prophesies and watching the characters figure out what those prophesies meant. Overall, Good Omens was a fun read, but you have to have a certain amount of irreverence in your soul to enjoy it. As someone who has a fair amount of irreverence in my soul, I would recommend it to people who don’t take religion too seriously. If you get upset when someone pokes fun at your religion, don’t read it. I give Good Omens a B.