November book list
Dec. 1st, 2009 06:14 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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christianreader20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [audio book]
by Jules Verne
Ehh…this is kind of the stereotypical classic: extremely well-written but boring to read. I mean, it’s an amazing work when you think about it. The fact that he figured out all this submarine stuff and basically designed the whole thing without any sort of training or even much traveling of the world is truly impressive. And the research he must have done to write it…at times it reads more like a history or naturalist book with all the names, dates, places, and flora and fauna description (the main character was a naturalist so as to give him a way to present all this stuff in book). In fact it was kind of a bit silly at times, with the characters spouting on an on with all this extremely precise historical information off the tops of their heads. And a lot of times it wasn’t even important to the story; he’d spend 5 minutes giving you all these details about an island and then they’d leave 0_o Anyway, the problem was it was just kind of boring. Not a lot happening most of the time. Unless you want to read it just because it’s such a classic I would say skip it. 2.5/5
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
Wow. I was looking around for good sci-fi books (or books of any kind really) and this series (this is the first of two books and then there are two more set a few hundred years later) kept popping up on different lists. And I was hooked right away. Simmons has an incredible imagination; the story is about six pilgrims making their way to the strange mysterious world of Hyperion. Each of them has a different fantastic reason for needing to go there, and hearing their stories is wonderful. I was really blown away by the imagination he displayed. The only problem is that you never get to the meat of the story, only the “meet” as in the whole book is about introducing the characters and it ends with them getting to Hyperion and heading towards the mysterious Time Tombs. Needless to say, I’m ready to read the second book. I can only imagine the frustration if you read this when it first came out and had to wait a couple years for the second one. 4/5
Guardian of Lies
by Steve Martini
The latest in the Paul Madriani series, this one changes up things in a lot of ways. It’s quite different than the previous entries in the series. It’s still a very fun read that had me anxious to get home and devour more pages, but I’m not sure I like all the changes. I’m also very curious about the next book and where Martini will take the series from here. 4/5
Marine Sniper
by Charles Henderson
This was lent to me by a guy at work last week. I told him that I probably wouldn’t get to it anytime soon, and he said that was fine, but I ended up finishing it pretty quickly. It’s the true story of the most prolific sniper in the history of the Marines: 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. And there were many more unconfirmed ones. The things he had to do, laying in the jungle for hours or days with bugs eating him alive, crawling through all kinds of foul water and jungle slime, are just amazing. In one story, he had to crawl 1500 yards (about ¾ of a mile) to get close enough to an enemy camp to kill a general. Because there was no cover, he had to worm crawl the whole way, inch by inch, and it took him 3 days! 3 days to go ¾ of a mile! Fascinating book. 3.5/5
The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time
by Michael Craig
My booklist is very guy-oriented so far this month : ) This is an account of the biggest poker game ever played. Basically this really really rich Texas banker billionaire guy wanted to see if he could beat the best pro poker players in the world by making the stakes so high that it would throw even them off. By the end of the book they were playing $100,000/$200,000 no-limit hold ‘em and it was all heads-up. At that point people would say things like “he basically broke even; he only lost $500,000” because at those stakes $500K is nothing. I knew the basics of the story but it had a lot of stuff I didn’t know. It got a little too much into the history of Vegas and that kind of stuff (I skipped those parts) but other than that it was very interesting. Started it on a Friday night and finished it Saturday morning. 3.5/5
To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis
This was a fun little time traveling/mystery/comedy of errors sort of book. The main mystery was pretty obvious, but it did have me laughing out loud at parts, especially when it poked fun at the Victorian Era. The time traveling was fun because here they had perfected (or almost perfected) time travel to the point where they could talk about it like any other mundane procedure. That would seem to take the fun out of it, but the adventure didn’t suffer at all. Reminds me of The Wheel of Time and how they had prophecy down to such a science that they would study it like math or physics. 3.5/5
The Revolution: A Manifesto
by Ron Paul
I love Ron Paul. Love, love, love. If we would just elect that guy our country would be 1000 times better off. But really, this book wasn’t all that informative. It was mostly just a rehash of what anyone who is paying even slight attention already knows. Which granted is probably about 5% of the population. There were a couple interesting tidbits for sure, but I didn’t feel like it changed my life or anything. It did manage to infuriate me though, when it talked about some of the nonsense going on right now. 3/5
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH [audio book]
by Robert C. O’Brien
This is the book that The Secret of NIMH movie was based on. It seems pretty simple at first, but as you get into it you find some more layers and it ends up being a pretty interesting book. I read it because it was by the same author as Z for Zacharia. I kind of want to see the movie now! 3.5/5
Undue Influence
by Steve Martini
Well, I have now read all the Paul Madriani books, and have read everything Martini has written, except for his very first book, The Simeon Chamber. I’ll read that sometime just for completeness sake I suppose. Anyway, this is the second book in the Madriani series, so it was a lot more about court intrigue and machinations than the “action adventure” stuff of the later novels. I personally enjoy the court stuff a lot more, but Martini is a good enough writer to pull off either style. As usual this one was a real page turner, and it had the most out of left field twist at the end that I’ve seen in his books. Looking back I guess there were some clues, but I was still going “What? Come on…no way.” when I got to the end at 3:00 this morning. 3.5/5
Books for November: 9
Books for 2009: 54
by Jules Verne
Ehh…this is kind of the stereotypical classic: extremely well-written but boring to read. I mean, it’s an amazing work when you think about it. The fact that he figured out all this submarine stuff and basically designed the whole thing without any sort of training or even much traveling of the world is truly impressive. And the research he must have done to write it…at times it reads more like a history or naturalist book with all the names, dates, places, and flora and fauna description (the main character was a naturalist so as to give him a way to present all this stuff in book). In fact it was kind of a bit silly at times, with the characters spouting on an on with all this extremely precise historical information off the tops of their heads. And a lot of times it wasn’t even important to the story; he’d spend 5 minutes giving you all these details about an island and then they’d leave 0_o Anyway, the problem was it was just kind of boring. Not a lot happening most of the time. Unless you want to read it just because it’s such a classic I would say skip it. 2.5/5
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
Wow. I was looking around for good sci-fi books (or books of any kind really) and this series (this is the first of two books and then there are two more set a few hundred years later) kept popping up on different lists. And I was hooked right away. Simmons has an incredible imagination; the story is about six pilgrims making their way to the strange mysterious world of Hyperion. Each of them has a different fantastic reason for needing to go there, and hearing their stories is wonderful. I was really blown away by the imagination he displayed. The only problem is that you never get to the meat of the story, only the “meet” as in the whole book is about introducing the characters and it ends with them getting to Hyperion and heading towards the mysterious Time Tombs. Needless to say, I’m ready to read the second book. I can only imagine the frustration if you read this when it first came out and had to wait a couple years for the second one. 4/5
Guardian of Lies
by Steve Martini
The latest in the Paul Madriani series, this one changes up things in a lot of ways. It’s quite different than the previous entries in the series. It’s still a very fun read that had me anxious to get home and devour more pages, but I’m not sure I like all the changes. I’m also very curious about the next book and where Martini will take the series from here. 4/5
Marine Sniper
by Charles Henderson
This was lent to me by a guy at work last week. I told him that I probably wouldn’t get to it anytime soon, and he said that was fine, but I ended up finishing it pretty quickly. It’s the true story of the most prolific sniper in the history of the Marines: 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. And there were many more unconfirmed ones. The things he had to do, laying in the jungle for hours or days with bugs eating him alive, crawling through all kinds of foul water and jungle slime, are just amazing. In one story, he had to crawl 1500 yards (about ¾ of a mile) to get close enough to an enemy camp to kill a general. Because there was no cover, he had to worm crawl the whole way, inch by inch, and it took him 3 days! 3 days to go ¾ of a mile! Fascinating book. 3.5/5
The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time
by Michael Craig
My booklist is very guy-oriented so far this month : ) This is an account of the biggest poker game ever played. Basically this really really rich Texas banker billionaire guy wanted to see if he could beat the best pro poker players in the world by making the stakes so high that it would throw even them off. By the end of the book they were playing $100,000/$200,000 no-limit hold ‘em and it was all heads-up. At that point people would say things like “he basically broke even; he only lost $500,000” because at those stakes $500K is nothing. I knew the basics of the story but it had a lot of stuff I didn’t know. It got a little too much into the history of Vegas and that kind of stuff (I skipped those parts) but other than that it was very interesting. Started it on a Friday night and finished it Saturday morning. 3.5/5
To Say Nothing of the Dog
by Connie Willis
This was a fun little time traveling/mystery/comedy of errors sort of book. The main mystery was pretty obvious, but it did have me laughing out loud at parts, especially when it poked fun at the Victorian Era. The time traveling was fun because here they had perfected (or almost perfected) time travel to the point where they could talk about it like any other mundane procedure. That would seem to take the fun out of it, but the adventure didn’t suffer at all. Reminds me of The Wheel of Time and how they had prophecy down to such a science that they would study it like math or physics. 3.5/5
The Revolution: A Manifesto
by Ron Paul
I love Ron Paul. Love, love, love. If we would just elect that guy our country would be 1000 times better off. But really, this book wasn’t all that informative. It was mostly just a rehash of what anyone who is paying even slight attention already knows. Which granted is probably about 5% of the population. There were a couple interesting tidbits for sure, but I didn’t feel like it changed my life or anything. It did manage to infuriate me though, when it talked about some of the nonsense going on right now. 3/5
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH [audio book]
by Robert C. O’Brien
This is the book that The Secret of NIMH movie was based on. It seems pretty simple at first, but as you get into it you find some more layers and it ends up being a pretty interesting book. I read it because it was by the same author as Z for Zacharia. I kind of want to see the movie now! 3.5/5
Undue Influence
by Steve Martini
Well, I have now read all the Paul Madriani books, and have read everything Martini has written, except for his very first book, The Simeon Chamber. I’ll read that sometime just for completeness sake I suppose. Anyway, this is the second book in the Madriani series, so it was a lot more about court intrigue and machinations than the “action adventure” stuff of the later novels. I personally enjoy the court stuff a lot more, but Martini is a good enough writer to pull off either style. As usual this one was a real page turner, and it had the most out of left field twist at the end that I’ve seen in his books. Looking back I guess there were some clues, but I was still going “What? Come on…no way.” when I got to the end at 3:00 this morning. 3.5/5
Books for November: 9
Books for 2009: 54
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