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When I was in middle school and high school I read nothing but science fiction and fantasy novels – probably to the detriment of my grades. When I had a choice between The Grapes of Wrath and The Sword of Shanara, it was an easy decision. One of my favorite books from back then was The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster. I read it twice in high school. I pretty much read everything Alan Dean Foster wrote back then.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for something to read so I decided to re-visit this old high school favorite. Wow, is this book bad. My standards must have seriously changed in the past 25 years. It was hard for me to finish the book it was so bad. I’m starting to think I should try and read some of those books they forced on me in school. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

One interesting thing about reading the book is that nothing was familiar. I know it’s been 25 years but I thought something in the book would seem familiar. It was like reading a new book. I would start re-reading books from 25 years ago (since they’d seem new to me now), except I’d probably dislike them all. Who was the person reading these books in the 80s? That guy has more in common with the annoying kids I encounter playing Rock Band on xbox live than with me.

This just reinforces my belief that English classes in high school do more to stop people from reading than anything else. They make reading so un-enjoyable for a teenager. They should devote some of the reading to reading for fun. Instead they turn reading into such a joyless chore. There was only one book or short story that was required reading that I enjoyed in all of high school or college. Thank goodness I had friends who encouraged me to read SF/F. Otherwise I wouldn’t have read anything.

I’m still working through the 2008 Hugo voters packet but I’ve read enough to make a decision on which novel to vote for best novel of 2008.  My criteria for picking the best is: which book did I enjoy the most. (no heavy thinking here). Here are the nominees and my thoughts about each:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

This is only the second Neil Gaiman book that I’ve read. The other was American Gods, which I didn’t really like. So I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. Luckily The Graveyard Book exceeded my low expectations. I’m guessing that this book was aimed towards the young adult market. It’s a fun story of a little boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

This book has a totally different tone that any of the others. It’s barely science fiction since pretty much all the technology used in the book already exists. If you’re a conservative who thinks the way the Bush administration handled the War On Terror ™ was the right way,  then you’d probably hate this book. Another book aimed at the YA market, it’s about a high school computer geek who is yanked from the streets as a terrorist suspect after a major terrorist attack on the US.  It’s interesting, scary and, I’d like to think, a bit implausible. Still though, it’s a good read as a warning against the state taking away freedom in order to combat terrorism.

Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross

Definitely the most hardcore science fiction book of this group and certainly not aimed at the YA market. (The main character is an obsolete sex-bot).  The story is set in a very interesting time a couple of hundred years in the future. Humans have died off and what’s left is a civilization of robots that still have Azimov’s 3 laws built in.  I’m mixed on this book. While the universe that Charles Stross created is vast and is a great setting for a story, the story itself was hard for me to follow. The ending was unsatisfying.  Still, it’s worth reading just for the universe that Stross creates but perhaps someone else should have written the story.

Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

Another novel with a YA audience in mind. (Just to clarify, I have no problem with YA novels).  Scalzi is one of my favorite authors and he doesn’t let me down here. This is the same story as in the Lost Colony except told from the point of view of a teenage girl – the daughter of the protagonists in The Last Colony. I’m also a little mixed on this novel. While I love Scalzi’s writing style and it’s interesting to read this story from a different point of view, it is still the same story that I read in The Last Colony.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

I loved Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and hated The Baroque Trilogy.  I managed to slog through Quicksilver but gave up on the trilogy half way through The Confusion.  Because the last two books I read by Stephenson were so very not-fun, I was not willing to buy Anathem. Of course it happened to be the only one of the five nominees that wasn’t included in the Hugo voters packet.  As a compromise, I downloaded the Kindle sample from Amazon. The sample was the same dense writing style that made me hate The Baroque Trilogy.  Maybe the book turns out to be the greatest science fiction book known to man,  but I won’t know. Stephenson has used up all the patience I have for his writing. (I’m sure he’s heartbroken).

My vote comes down to choice between Zoe’s Tale,  Little Brother and The Graveyard Book.  And damn it, I still can’t make a decision.

I bought a Kindle last year. (a couple of months before the Kindle 2 came out. doh!). I really like the Kindle. One of the reasons that I bought it was that I was getting tired of having so many books laying around. I have a room in my basement that’s full of books. I know I could trade them in or donate them but I’m way too lazy to actually do that.

A side effect of having the Kindle is that I now have a history of what I’ve read this year:

Now this history isn’t entirely accurate. It doesn’t show any books that I’ve read that I didn’t buy from amazon.com and I haven’t read three of the books listed there yet. I’ve read three other novels that were free ebooks and one novella that came in the Hugo voters packet, so it’s pretty close.

It looks like I’m averaging about 2.5 books per month. This is 15 books this year that aren’t going to be in a pile on the floor in that room in my basement.