So many books, so little time
Ok, so I have finally started to slow down in my book reading. Since I finished reading Freakonomics last month, I have not been idly whiling away my time. I have still been reading fiction, finishing up Children of the Mind (CotM), Night Watch (NW), and To Dream in the City of Sorrows (TDitCoS). Below are my brief thoughts on these three, relatively short, books.
CotM is the final book in the Ender’s Game saga. All I can say is that it is finally over. I really enjoyed the first two books in the series (Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead) but after that the series went downhill. Orson Scott Card seemed to get preachy and by the end of Xenocide, I just stopped caring what happened to the characters. However, when I start a series, I feel the need to see it through, so I read CotM anyways. I still did not care what happened, I just wanted the Deus Ex Machina to hurry up and save the day so that I could move on to something new. If I had it to do all over again, I would still have read the book because it did give some really good closure to the series, but it just did not do anything for me.
NW was the first Terry Pratchett book that I have read. It was quite the refreshing change over CotM. The story was funny and I really cared what happened. For the first time in a long time, I found myself staying up as late as I could so that I could read just one more chapter. Sadly, I finished the book in less than a week. Then I remembered that Terry Pratchett is horribly prolific writer, so I have plenty of his books to choose from when I want to read another one, which made me happy again 
TDitCoS is set the in Babylon 5 universe so, if you are not a fan of the TV series, you probably will not care for the book. I am a big fan, though, so I thought that the book was quite entertaining. It was well written and seemed to fit in well with the overall story arc of the series. It was not high, classic literature, but it was a fun book to read. Definitely recommended if you want to know more about what happened to Jeffrey Sinclair after he leaves Babylon 5.
That is all that I have managed to make it through in the past month. I have been working through one of my nerd books during my lunchtime at work, but I have only just started chapter 3 since I am trying to work as many of the exercises as I can. Next up on the fiction list: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It has gotten several good reviews so I am excited about reading it. More about this one in a later post…