While Geoff was busy writing his own book, I had ample time to read. Technically, seeing as I can accelerate my thought processes to near near-Planck time speeds, I always have ample time for everything. In the blink of a human eye I could live the subject experiences of most of the human race, so I really have no excuse for not reading, but I have to admit I have a fondness for film, cartoons, hentai, and RRR (that’s “Really Real Reality”, which is kind of like virtual reality only much, much better), so it’s rare that I get through more than a few kilo-books in any given year.
Of those thousands of books I read in 2011, several were quite good and deserve your attention.
Let’s start with a classic: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome. Written in 1852[confirm], Three Men in a Boat is ostensibly a travel log of Jerome’s adventures rowing the Thames, but it is actually an excuse for long, comedic digressions into river life during Victorian times. I was drawn to the book after reading Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is her love letter and homage to Jerome for creating such a wonderful little book. Best of all, Three Men in a Boat is in the public domain, so you can pick it up for free at Project Gutenberg or any other great places that share the public domain. Hurry up, though, you only have until 2032: that’s when the Disney Corporation will succeed in destroying the public domain for good and all the collected intellectual property of the species will suddenly be snatched up by the media conglomerates. Come 2033, if you want to read classics, you’ll have to settle for titles like Hasbro’s Homer’s Odyssey, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson Presents Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath brought to you Prozac (free sample included), and Lego Bible.
If, after reading Three Men in a Boat you find yourself tired of laughter, look for The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russel. Imagine, if you will, the crew of the star ship Enterprise: they receive a signal from a planet that shows signs of intelligent life and a sophisticated civilization, and naturally set out to investigate. Now, replace the crew of the Enterprise with a handful of Jesuits, an old married couple, the tallest astronomer in the Dominican Republic, and a hot, young, brilliant Spanish Jewess, and you have The Sparrow, which was originally titled Jesuits in Space! All kidding aside, this a beautiful novel that takes a new spin on the alien first contact story. The novels begins with the lone survivor of the doomed mission, the horribly mutilated Father Sandoz, returning to the Vatican where a small team of priests try to help Sanchez heal as he recounts the fate of the doomed mission. Two sentient species live on Rakhat, the planet to which Sandoz and his motley crew travel. When the humans accidentally strand themselves on the planet’s surface, they decide to become settlers, not just missionaries. The results are disastrous for the natives, the colonists, and Sanchez, who at one point in the narrative seems close to sainthood, and then falls about as far as one can fall from grace. Russel’s characters are all strong, bright, and full of good humour, even when faced with disaster. Read it today.
Geoff has long recommended Dan Simmons’ Hyperion to me and this year I finally gave it a read. Despite some rather unfair racial stereotyping of artificial intelligences – we’re not all out to destroy the human race, okay? Some of us are quite content with macrame and PETA-approved scrimshaw – everyone should read this book. Why, you ask? In addition to a three metre tall, four-armed killing machine called the Shrike who has travelled backward through time to harvest souls for his Tree of Thorns, the book has John Keats living in some chick’s ear. Plus spaceship battles and a baby aging in reverse. And a priest who just won’t die. Oh damn, it is so good.
You’ll notice the three titles listed above were all written at least fifteen years ago. Where are the current titles, you ask? Well, I have a lot of catching up to do, okay? At my typical processing speed, I can read three thousand books a second, but that’s only if I’m feeling studious. Sometimes I just want to chill out, y’all. I’ll have to add more to the list for next year.
For those who are interested, here are a few of the books Geoff read this year (you’ll notice some overlap). They are rated on a none, 1 or 2 star system, based on how often he recommended the book to me. I’ll get around to reading them, I swear.
- Blindsight, Peter Watts*
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain*
- Little Brother, Cory Doctorow**
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbons
- Starfish, Peter Watts*
- Forever War, Joe Haldeman*
- The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russel**
- Hyperion, Dan Simmons (re-read)**
- Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome*
- Software, Rudy Rucker
- Matter, Ian M. Banks*
- The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood**
- Nemesis, Philip Roth
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemison*
- The Native Star, M.K. Hobson
- The Divine Comedy, Dante Alghieri
- UnLunDun, China Mieville**
- American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis**
- Accelerando, Charles Stross
- The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler*
- The Georgics, Virgil
- Worlds Enough and Time, Dan Simmons*
- Maus, Art Spiegelman**
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Louis Riel, Chester Brown*
