Books Worth Reading

Over at Lost Book Archives, there is a nice long essay titled “What Is Speculative Fiction?” If you liked my essay on the same subject, you might enjoy this one as well. Plenty of examples, both films and books, are given.

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme about books and reading. I thought I would use it to inspire posts when I don’t have any ideas what to write about. Of course, I could write a review, but I’m just lazy right now. I actually have a whole pile of books I’ve finished that are waiting to be reviewed — I’ll get around to them one of these days.

Here’s this week’s question:

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?

Last night, I started Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, which I recently mentioned was a book on my wishlist that I was looking forward to reading. In the middle of Chapter 2 and I’ve already laughed out loud a few times — a good sign. This may be the first (and only) book I’ve ever read that is written in the first-person plural tense.

I’m also reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This was another book I was greatly looking forward to reading, but I can’t make much progress. I started it a few months ago, when I was still pregnant, but I had to put it down because it was depressing me so much. I picked it up again recently, read one page and remembered why it was so depressing. The statistics she provides on our whole food system and how precarious it is are frightening. Maybe I don’t need to read this. My eyes were already wide opened by The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Here’s what else I’m reading: Squishy Turtle and Friends. That’s Not My Puppy. That’s Not My Monster. Duck in a Truck. The Foot Book. Going on a Bear Hunt. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Yeah, I have a four-month-old.

LifeHacker has posted a list of books that changed their readers’ lives. I love book lists of all kinds, so I had to see which of these books I had read. Of course, I discounted the #1 and #2 spots (the Bible and the works of Ayn Rand) because they always end up at the tops of such lists. (I have nothing against the Bible, but it’s a cliched answer to the question. I won’t go into my feelings about Ayn Rand, except to say that reading Atlas Shrugged changed my life by convincing me never to read anything written by Ayn Rand again.)

Here’s the list minus the top two and my reactions:

• Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Yes, I’ve read it and loved it, but can’t say it changed my life.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig – I tried to read it once because of its life-changing properties, but I had to abandon it.
• The Stranger by Albert Camus – No, I never read it; I got enough French existentialism in my high school AP course, thank you very much.
• 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell — I have read 1984 and liked it, but not life-changing; Animal Farm is on my to-read list.
• The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins — I haven’t read them and don’t really plan to.
• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien – Read them, loved them, not life-changing.
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – One of my all-time favorite books; not life-changing, though.
• Dune by Frank Herbert – Another all-time favorite, but I couldn’t say it was life-changing.
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu — Haven’t read it.
• The Gunslinger [Dark Tower] Series by Stephen King – Read it, loved it, King is one of my favorite authors, but this series did not change my life.
• Getting Things Done by David Allen – OK, I can see how this book might change your life if you put its ideas into practice, but it didn’t change mine; I was already pretty organized anyway.
• Neuromancer by William Gibson – Another great book that didn’t change my life.
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – Childhood classic; didn’t change my life.
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein — Nice read, but I have to say that I’d be a little leery of anyone whose life was changed by this book.
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling – I have adamantly refused to let this series change my life (or even to read them).
• the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe — Poe is a terrific read, but alas, not life-changing.
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – I never even heard of this one.
• Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach – Ugh! yes, I read it in high school like everyone else.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde — Another great classic but not life-changing for me.
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – I have no intentions of reading this.
• Tao Te Ching – I would like to read this but probably never will.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – Huh?
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond — Another huh?

Let me just observe that 14 of these entries are speculative fiction of some kind.

Whew, life-changing is a tall order. Even staring at my bookshelves and seeing all the books that I have loved over the years, I am hard-pressed to come up with a title that literally changed my life — where my life would be radically different if I hadn’t read that book.

I guess I will have to confine my list to those books that most strongly influenced me. And they would be:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — because this is the most perfect novel ever written
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – for teaching me about the absurdity of war and life
• The Stand by Stephen King – for its mythology and the characters who have become old friends
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott – the best book about writing I have ever read

Have any books changed your life? If you blog about this, please let me know in the comments.

Ok, my “to read” pile is out of control. I have one shelf in my bedroom that’s designated as a “to read” shelf. Ever since I discovered BookMooch, though, the contents of that shelf have spilled off the end and created a pile next to it that’s almost as tall as the bookcase.

My husband, who gets two shelves and still has piles of books all over the floor, has suggested that we solve the problem by getting another bookcase for the bedroom.

In the meantime, I am trying not to buy any new books until I make a dent in the pile. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped adding books to my wishlist. Here are a few that I don’t know if I can wait for:

• The Pesthouse by Jim Crace just came out in trade paperback. I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic books, and this looks like a good one.
• The Children’s Hospital by Chris Adrian is another clever post-apocalyptic book I heard about on NPR.
• Speaking of post-apocalyptic, Amazon recommended a new release: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. It has stories by Stephen King, Octavia Butler and Jonathan Lethem, among others. I don’t think they’re new stories, but I can’t resist.
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris - I have been wanting to read this for a long time. Its cynical, “cubicle culture” themes strike a chord with me. And to continue the theme, it has a post-apocalyptic title.
• 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill - I don’t usually like story collections, but I enjoyed his debut novel Heart-Shaped Box immensely.

How about you — are there any books you’re particularly looking forward to? Anyone have any recommendations for (relatively) new books to add to my wishlist?

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

My first experience with this short prologue to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings epic was having it read aloud to me by my father, chapter by chapter, at bedtime every night. We always remember fondly the books we loved as children, but unlike many of them, The Hobbit withstands the test of growing up. Neither as long or as politically complex as LotR, The Hobbit is still a gripping adventure story filled with trolls, orcs, elves, giant spiders, battles and near escapes. Illustrated by Tolkien himself with detailed maps, it is a wonderful introduction to the world of Middle-Earth, to the fascinating characters of Bilbo, Gandalf and Gollum, and to the timeless realm of fantasy and adventure that we all need to continue to visit, even when we are no longer children.

You might have heard that the film adaptation of The Hobbit is under way. But why not read the book first?

I haven’t read The Andromeda Strain in decades, but I remember liking it a lot. I used to be a dedicated Michael Crichton reader. That was before I discovered what his views on global warming were and that he was actually giving (mis)information to President Bush on this important subject. Since then, all Crichton has been expunged from my household.

Even before I gave up on Crichton for his political views, his books were either worsening exponentially or I was rapidly outgrowing them. The last book by him that I read, Prey, was probably one of the worst books I have ever read. Still, I really enjoyed some of his earlier books, such as The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead and even Jurassic Park.

So I actually was looking forward to the miniseries adaptation of The Andromeda Strain that aired on A&E earlier this month. Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Frank Darabont — all heavy hitters — were involved as executive producers. But unfortunately, the adaptation did not live up to my expectations at all. In fact, many of the plot points were just plain stupid, and I kept thinking to myself, “I don’t remember this from the book. Was the book this dumb?” Apparently not; this review from Misfits of Sci Fi goes over the differences between the new miniseries and the original novel and examines why the miniseries failed.

I remember the book as being dry reading with a lot of science, but also very suspenseful. The premise is actually pretty simple: Four scientists are locked together in an underground lab with a dangerous, highly contagious virus. Some intense failsafe measures are in place to keep the virus from escaping, and the concept of an “odd man” — one with no family ties who can make a more objective decision whether to nuke them all in order to save humanity from the virus — is a much more important plot point in the novel than it was in the miniseries.

If you can’t stomach reading Crichton either, check out the original movie adaptation from 1971, which I also remember as being more entertaining than this more recent one.

Lilith’s Brood, Octavia Butler (2000)

Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis novels were first compiled into one volume in 1989, but that compilation is now out of print. As with Seed to Harvest, Grand Central Publishing has reissued the compilation in an attractive trade paperback to capture new readers. And I’m glad they did, because I probably wouldn’t have read these books otherwise.

When I finished Lilith’s Brood, I actually wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not, but I thought about it a great deal, which I think is a sign of a book worth reading. The underlying theme disturbed me, partly because I didn’t find much hope in it, partly because I found myself agreeing with the series’ assessment: that humankind is fated by our own biology to destroy ourselves.

Lilith’s Brood includes three novels: Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago, which comprise the Xenogenesis series. The story starts 250 years after a devastating nuclear war. The few human survivors have been picked up by an alien spacecraft and kept in stasis while the aliens, the Oankali, study them. Lilith is one of the first to be awakened and to be integrated into an Oankali family. She is being trained to awaken others, to introduce them to their new reality and their alien hosts, and to reveal the Oankali’s plan: to produce Oankali-human offspring, a brand-new hybrid species.

The Oankali are genetic engineers and reproduce by genetic manipulation. They have no disease or old age, and they can communicate with one another at the cellular level. They survive by traveling through space and finding species with promising genetic traits to mate with, such as humans. However, this means that humans can no longer reproduce with one another; the Oankalis have disabled their fertility. Also, when the Oankali leave, they will consume the remainder of Earth’s resources for the journey.

Of course, there is rebellion. Many humans choose to live long, childless lives rather than join with the Oankali. Lilith does not, because having been integrated with an Oankali family, she has become physically dependent on them. The next two books follow the lives of two of her children, as the Oankali-human interbreeding progresses. I don’t think I would have been compelled to keep reading the second novel if it were a separate sequel; each book on its own seems somewhat incomplete.

Throughout all three novels, the humans — living in primitive conditions on Earth — are portrayed as without hope, a species that, if allowed to reproduce, would attempt to destroy itself again within a few generations. Humans are hierarchical and competitive, unlike Oankali. As individuals, they can be intelligent and compassionate. But as a group, they are violent, destructive and territorial. Even when the aliens allow some humans to start a new colony on Mars and have children, the Oankali hold out no hope for their future.

That’s what makes this series so disturbing. The only hope posited is essentially that a greater power from the outside will find us, cure all our diseases and create with us a better people than we can ever hope to be. We are unable to cure ourselves, doomed by our own biology to always be fighting and murdering one another. I look at the news every day and feel that this is true. But I don’t want it to be true. I want humans to be capable of evolving past whatever impulse causes us to want to destroy one another. I want us to save ourselves, not look to some alien or god to save us.

But if I’m looking for that kind of resolution, I won’t find it in Lilith’s Brood. Still, I’m glad I read it. Even if I don’t ultimately agree with Butler’s conclusions, her writing made me think about and question some of my own assumptions.

It looks like director Ridley Scott is returning to sci-fi filmmaking with an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Leonardo di Caprio is slated to star. Apparently, Scott has been waiting 20 years to make this book into a movie. (via Rope of Silicon)

Brave New World is not one of my favorite dystopian novels, to tell the truth. I can’t say why, really — it’s an amazingly prescient novel that predicts the vapid consumerist culture we seem to be constructing right now. I just didn’t connect strongly with it when I read it, perhaps because despite its prescience, it still seemed a little old-fashioned. But I think Scott is a great director, and I would love to see a modern interpretation and updating.

Is anyone else looking forward to a Ridley Scott version of Brave New World?

Seed to Harvest, Octavia Butler (2007)

Grand Central Publishing has been reissuing Octavia Butler’s novels in attractive trade paperbacks, which I think is a great thing. It enables readers — meaning me — to catch up on Butler’s work, particularly her series, which are each collected into one volume. Seed to Harvest is comprised of all of the novels in the Patternist series, including Butler’s first published novel, Mind of My Mind. The only Patternist novel that is omitted is Survivor, which Butler herself disowned.

The novels are all rather short, so it makes sense to read them through in one long volume. They are also presented in chronological order in the collection, rather than in the order in which they were originally published in the 1970s: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark and Patternmaster.

I was already a fan of Butler’s when I picked up Seed to Harvest, and I found this series to be the weakest of her works, which makes sense, considering they were her earliest publications. Clay’s Ark, set in a near-future similar to that of Parable of the Sower, was my favorite of the lot: dark, violent and ultimately rather hopeless. Still, none of the novels felt really complete on its own. It was clear that Butler was honing her chops with these early efforts. All that being said, even her mediocre books are fast and entertaining reads, with lots of interesting concepts to chew on, and I can recommend them. I’m also glad that these reissues can bring Butler to the attention of a whole new generation of readers.

Do you have a hard time sitting down to read that classic you’ve always been meaning to get to before you die, but you have no problems reading all your email or RSS feeds every morning? Then you should check out the DailyLit service. Classic books are delivered to your email inbox or RSS feed reader in small chunks each morning, so you can read them with your morning cup of coffee. No excuses! It may take you 675 days to get through War and Peace, but at least you can say you read it.

This is a really neat idea. While the public domain books are free, there are also books for sale here that can be delivered electronically. Unfortunately, it worked better in theory than in practice, at least for me. I had to suspend my subscription to Wuthering Heights after I fell woefully far behind (I only read the first installment). But this may be just the way to make reading that great novel more manageable.

Oh, and it’s a community too, so you can discuss what your reading with fellow bibliophiles. (via LifeHacker)