I have recently decided to start reading through all the
books recommended to me or that are well known to be good reads. My work being
what it is, I have had time to hunker down with these delightful reads for the
last few days. I am trying to remember that I am an English teacher:
must.write.more…..
The Host, by Stephanie
Meyer
When I picked up Stephanie Meyer’s, The Host, I must confess that I did not have very high
expectations. I had read (or attempted to read) the Twilight series and gave up after the first book simply because I
thought the writing was poorly executed and the plot predictable and boring. I
do have to come clean and admit that I watched the movie version of The Host before reading the book, but
surprisingly this did not ruin the experience. This is an excellent young adult
novel (I would not call this adult fiction, though it is labelled as such). It
takes the medium of science fiction and uses it to its advantage while
employing new ideas that I have not encountered in my Sci-fi reads. More than
just an enjoyable and gripping read, however, this book also does what all good Sci-fi and fantasy novels should
do: it conveys a deeper message not always considered in every-day life. It is
a compelling novel and Meyers pushes her readers to consider the deeper
philosophical questions of the meaning of love and at the end of it all, what
it means to be human. Though there are still a few remnants of the Twilight teenage-girl hype in the
romance of the story, Meyers does a good job of making sure that romantic love
is not the sole focus of the novel. Meyers
has managed to create a world using the contemporary trends of “apocalypse” and
“alien-invasion,” and turn them into something completely new. I look forward
to the next book of the trilogy with breathless anticipation.
Ender’s Game,
Orson Scott Card
The first time I picked up Ender’s Game it was a couple of years ago. And it turned into one
of those instances when you try reading a book and it’s just not the right
timing for it. You and the book aren’t developing any chemistry, so you doggy-ear
a page and put it down for two years. (Tangential paragraph: this has happened
to me many times, but I have been re-discovering these lost books in the past
couple years and it is very satisfying to finally finish something you couldn’t
get into years before. Some of these “lost books” however, will simply stay in
that pile. There are some books I just can’t make myself read.) This was so
with Ender. This time, I could not put it down. The story itself is gripping,
because you know the fate of the future of the human race is in the hands of a
boy who struggles with the inner battle of his empathy and is incredible talent
as a soldier. As a futuristic-sci-fi novel, it effectively captures the way our
society may have changed in its day and age. Card does not forget that this is
a young adult novel and therefore does not have to be 1000 pages long. He gets
his point across in a decent amount of pages, and the reader does not find
herself, bored or “skipping to the end.” Card, in the end surprises us and
presents some provocative themes that leave his readers questioning current
wars and motives and “why we kill.”
Stay tuned for more little book reviews in the coming days....
