Saturday, October 15, 2005

Books: Greeting cards and recruiting posters.

Just finished a re-read of Haldeman's Forever War. If you haven't read it, know that its status as a classic is justified (although it's of little use to the cheery scribes at Hallmark or the US Army's ad agency,) but that it's not the kind of book you'd pick up for a quick afternoon cheer-me-up. (Although I always find it darkly uplifting in its own subversive way...)

I especially like the poke in the eye it gives to Clarke's hive-mind Ideal Future; instead, it celebrates the earthy joys that make, say, Heinlein such a pleasure to read.


Faithful Reader: "Gee, Tam, don't you read any books that suck?"
Tam the Blogger: "Not since Jennifer Government. I have a zillion-book personal library to draw on for emergency re-reads during dry spells until I've mined the Pournelle/Anderson/Card vein dry at the local used-book-o-rama. Once I have to start picking new authors by jacket blurbs again, expect the disrespectful reviews to start cropping up like daisies."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

CJ Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe books are nice, and I'm REALLY liking her Foreigner universe series. Her Chanur novels are pretty good, too.

Cowboy Blob said...

I love the Chanur series! My favorite sci-fi guys are the team of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; Their Motie Duology: "The Mote on God's Eye" and "On the Gripping Hand," and Niven's "The Integral Trees" and "The Smoke Ring" are great reads with some thoughtful science woven in. Check out their "Footfall" too.