#19 Slaughterhouse- five by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut is a CRAZY m-f'er.  Holy scatterbrain, batman. I suppose random hopping around in the timeline of the story is a really useful device in a book about someone who comes unstuck in time.  I hadn't realized before that twice an many people died in the firebombing of Dresden as in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.  So it goes.

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Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree.  It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves.  Its flowers were government bonds.  Its fruit was diamonds.  It attracted human beings who killed each other around its roots and made very good fertilizer.  So it goes.

#13 Animal Farm by George Orwell

After plodding through the last book over the course of several months, this one went by in the blink of an eye.  141 pages, but feels shorter.  I'm left not quite knowing what Orwell feels about communism, but sure doesn't like people in power.  He seems to extol the virtues of a society where all are equal and everyone works for the common good to the best of his abilities, but any form of government can be perverted from it's ideals and corrupted by certain individuals.
It made me really hungry for bacon..

#64 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I was actually looking for more by Arthur C. when I found Susanna.  This was a slow book.  It took me quite a wile to get through it.  It was very interesting, but not exciting.  There is very little action, but it was not dull.  I enjoyed reading it, but was not eager to jump back into it after putting it down.  It is a very different kind of story altogether. Set in the early 1800's, it is based upon the two magicians in the title of the book trying to bring Magic back to England.  

Norrell is a real wizard type.  Very bookish, reserved, quiet.. cowardly and narcissistic too.  He is a real jerk through most of the book.   

Strange is more the Sorcerer type. He has a much better feel for the magic as opposed to Norrell's knowledge.  Since he did start out as Norrell's apprentice (later nemesis), he has plenty of knowledge too.  He is WAY more charismatic and downright dashing at times.  

Stephen and the Fairy are have a great dynamic, as do Childermas and Viniculus.  I think Viniculus is my favorite character, but I wish there was more about him.

It is odd that neither of the main characters in the title of the book are involved in the ultimate climax of the story.  

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It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings.  This is true even if the song is surpassingly beautiful.  Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation, by and large, unmoved.  Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it.  But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him.  Stephen felt the clouds pause in their passing; he felt the sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt the cold mists dance.  he understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.  In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.

ooOOooohh... that's good. 

#49 Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke

A book about first contact.. and last contact.  Benevolent overlords come to Earth just in tome to prevent us from destroying ourselves.  They teach us to live in peace, but some wonder if they have an ulterior motive.  Of course there is way more going on with the aliens than just a friendly greeting from the stars, but this book goes somewhere no other story has.  They wait for signs of Humanity growing out of it's childhood and help us to the next stage.  The end of the book with it's first person view of total loneliness and desolation; the feeling of accepting one's ultimate fate; the evaporation of.. everything.. was so well written it just left me with an odd, empty kind of feeling.

#44 Ringworld by Larry Niven

This was the most sciency of the Sci Fi books I have read so far.  The characters are good.  Fun adventure.  But it felt like Niven used the story as a backdrop / stage for his neato futuristic inventions. That is just an observation, not really a criticism.  It actually suited me just fine for what it is.  I'll take it.

#67 The Sword of Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks

Just finished Sword / Elfstones / Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks. They were good, but it was kinda like reading the same book three times over.

This post of FB is what got me thinking about creating this blog.  I got a few comments from a few different friends and there was more of a discussion than I had expected.  I didn't want to keep my wall littered with my reactions, but I did want to put my thoughts somewhere.   It just took a while to get there (here).  

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It was the kind of autumn day fond memories conjure up of a milder season's passing when winter snows lie deep about. 

#36, #39 The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds by HG Welles

This was my reaction on FB:
Just finished reading War Of The Worlds and The Time Machine - both by HG Wells. Both are excellent. At 180 and 115 pages respectively, some of their contemporaries should take note... but their notes would be longer than his books.

Really.. does a good Sci Fi / Fantasy book HAVE to be thousands of pages long?  Is nobody capable of excellence AND brevity? Maybe it is just what you have to do to make money as an author nowadays or something like that.  You won't get published unless you hit at least the 300 page mark.  That is a total guess, but maybe there is something there.   
Both books are absolutely riveting and being a fraction of the size of many other works, are also very accessible.