I Red Books

My wife and I have been doing a lot of reading on this trip, and I thought I'd share which books I've read and what I think of them. I will avoid spoilers except when I go out of my way to include the biggest spoilers imaginable. But that probably won't happen.

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

Subtitle: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1
Year: 1992
Author: Timothy Zahn
Why I read it: it is supposed to be the best Star Wars novel.
One liner: The Empire is down but not out after Return of the Jedi.
Review: The author spends the first half of the book putting all the heroes you know and expect to show up in situations similar to those you've already seen. The villain is knowledgeable and insightful almost to the point of omniscience, and he lacks motivation. His plans are foiled by the good guys multiple times simply due to luck, which frustrates me far more than him. As with many Star Wars stories, this one tries to change things up by adding a new mechanic to the Force that ultimately doesn't make sense because (A) the Force doesn't make sense and (B) it does not make sense why something so important to the operation of the Force would have gone unnoticed or unexploited for so long. The book is basically the same as the movies to me: fine, not bad, just not compelling. For much better Star Wars stories, play Knights of the Old Republic (I or II).

The Almost Nearly Perfect People

Subtitle: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
Year: 2015
Author: Michael Booth
Why I read it: Drea read it, liked it, and suggested it.
One liner: How and why the 5 Scandinavian countries are happy.
Review: I do not go for non-fiction, travel, or anthropology, but this book was pretty good. The author is English and is thus close enough to the Nordic cultures to (mostly) understand them but is also distant enough from them to see what makes them work, where they are lacking, how they differ from each other, etc. He also has that typical English dry wit, so the reading never gets boring. If you are or are close to anyone with descent from Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, I suggest this book. There were things about myself and my family I related to even though we have no specific traditions from these countries.

Frankenstein

Subtitle: Or, The Modern Prometheus
Year: 1818
Author: Mary Shelley
Why I read it: it is supposed to be a classic.
One liner: The dangers of playing God when you're the world's most verbose diva.
Review: This one's a train wreck the whole way through. Every character speaks with the same (blathering) voice, and the ostensible point of the book (don't play God) is drowned in overly long expositions on irrelevant things. More than once you follow a subplot for 20 or so pages just to learn that the whole subplot doesn't matter. Both Frankenstein and his monster apparently live every minute in the utmost ecstasy or the utmost dejection, and they both needed to grow up, shut up, and actually think things through. Every piece of this book feels like the author was trying to disguise that she was creating the "plot" one step ahead of the reader getting to it. I've been told that I have to understand the context in which the book was written, but I really don't. I understand that the book is important for historical reasons and I'm not advocating burning it, but geez. What a turd this one is.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Subtitle: n/a
Year: 1987
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Why I read it: it was on a "best of" sci-fi list and it had an intriguing premise.
One liner: a "what if" story about a race of bi-gendered humanoids.
Review: I really like the premise of this one, that there is a race of aliens who are both male and female, and you follow a Terran guy sent to bring them into what is basically Star Trek's Federation. While the author does explain her take on what that might look like and how that might operate, I don't think any of it is particularly insightful, poignant, or surprising. That exploration into gender and its impact on societal development is told through and around an envoy trying to get a newly discovered planet to join an interplanetary brotherhood of races. The politics and adventures in that plot are decently told, but not very compelling. I was pretty let down by this book, as I felt like it started so well and then never really did anything with it. I can't really say I disliked it, though. It was lukewarm.

Next Time, if anyone cares about this

I am about to finish American Gods, and after that I do not know what I'll read. Feel free to suggest books to me that I will look up on Amazon, decide to never read, and then politely feign interest in on social media.

Seriously, though, I already have about a dozen books in my queue, so I probably won't get to any suggestions till 2023. I'm not a voracious reader.