Summary: Theo meets the rest of the Clan Korval Family and meets her new ship.
How do you review a book that is #3 is a sub-series and number 14 is a larger series?
After all most people will either not be interested because they have not read any of the previous books, or they are not interested because they have already invested so much time reading the series that they are going to read the book regardless of how well it is written.
Several years ago I was reading a book review; I don’t remember where or what book was being reviewed. I just remember that the reviewer said that she (I do remember it was a she) rarely reads series fiction. I thought that was odd, but because I had never thought of books that were written as a series being a category and the fact that you would exclude a type of books because there were more than one.
The longer I thought about it the more I understood. Series require a lot of investment. You both have to read a number of books to get to the end. And quite often the series is drawn out over years if not decades. (I still have refused to read the fifth book in the Game of Throne series because I am pissed that it took so long for George RR Martin to get around to writing it.)
At the same time, Series fiction has its own benefit. The reader is able to connect with characters over thousands of pages instead of hundreds. Usually that means a more well rounded character and a longer character arc to the story. It may mean a more fleshed out setting than would be possible in a stand alone novel.
![The Picture of Dorian Gray | [Oscar Wilde]](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/51rdv1jvykl-_sl175_.jpg "The Picture of Dorian Gray | [Oscar Wilde]")
Summary: A Faustian bargain to keep beauty and youth in exchange for your soul.
One of my reading priorities this year was to read more classics. I have not done very well on my other reading goals, so when Amazon and Audible released a ton of free classics to promote their new Whispersync for Voice I decided to pick up most of them and try to start reading more classics.
Honestly, other than the reference in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I had never heard of Dorian Gray (and I did not even know there is a Dorian Gray movie until I started looking around for this review.) I knew that his portrait aged instead of his body. I assumed it was some sort of faustian bargain with the devil.
The actual book leaves a lot to the reader. There is a sort of prayer that Dorian Gray says when he is first shown the portrait where he says that he would give anything to keep his beauty and youth as the painting shows. But there is no explanation, supernatural or otherwise, for why Dorian stops aging and his portrait starts aging. Similarly, we are not really told whether it is Dorian’s own nature that he becomes evil and depraved or whether there is some connection to his soul being lost in the bargain that causes him to become depraved. I assume that Wilde just was allowing his reader to make the faustian connection.
This is really the second half of the second book. There is no real separation other than the fact that it is too long for a single book.
Larsson split the two books in a good place. There was a nice cliff hanger and it made sense. But this third book picks up immediately after the conclusion of the second.
Again, this book is fairly focused on Lisbeth (my preferred main character) but because of the result of the second book her actions are restricted. In many ways, this book is about Lisbeth allowing people into her life and understanding her need to depend on others.
Takeaway: Culture is the result of a wide variety of influences.
Thomas Sowell is an economist. I have read three of his economics book (Basic Economics, Applied Economics and Economics Facts and Fallacies). These books, while clearly from a conservative approach to economics were focused on education and not propaganda. I would recommend any of the three books to help you understand how economics works. (Basic Economics is an intro to economics, Applied Economics focuses on national level and Facts and Fallacies is more focused on countering bad economic thinking at many levels).
Conquests and Cultures is the third book in a series of historical exploration of culture. (Race and Culture and Migration and Culture are the first two). These are historical looks at culture using Sowell’s common tools of economic and broad level research.
“The difference between a mediocre club player and a regional champion isn’t inborn talent. It’s the ability to push through in the moments when it is easier to quit.”
Those words so struck me that I stopped and copied them down while I was listening to this short (free) audiobook. Seth Godin likes provocative phrases. And after listening to the whole book, I know that what Godin means is that it is inborn talent and the ability to push through in hard times. But that is not what he was actually saying here.
The story of Rudy isn’t that he worked really hard and his hard work paid off and he became a great football legend. He worked really hard and after years, and a lot of points where most people said he should quit, he got a chance, not because of his performance, but because of his heart and other people’s willingness to step aside to help him out.
Summary: Classic Science Fiction look at what it means to be sentient.
Several weeks ago I had never heard of H Beam Piper or his book Little Fuzzy. Instead I was looking for books by John Scalzi. Scalzi is a contemporary Science Fiction author and over the past several months I have read two of his books (both narrated by Will Wheaton).
I picked up Fuzzy Nation, which happens to be a retelling of H Beam Piper’s classic Little Fuzzy.
The audiobook of Fuzzy Nation included both the new and the original. I have already reviewed the new, so this is the review of the original.
Summary: Art is fundamental to the way that we express the truth of Christianity.
I am late to the Francis Schaeffer party. This book is more than 30 years old. And it is only the second book by Schaeffer I have read.
But I think it is as readable (and important) today as it was when it was written. I was talking with my wife a couple days before I started reading this about the differences that technology has made to the arts. We were talking about how tools made it so that anyone could edit movies or take pictures.
Summary: A couple of murders and it seems that Lisbeth may have committed them.
After reading it, I think that the trilogy has been mis-marketed. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has received all the attention. But in reality it is just a prequel for The Girl Who Played With Fire/The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet’s Nest. The last two books in this trilogy are really just one book split into two parts.
The Girl Who Played With Fire starts about a year after the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finishes. Lisbeth is back as the main character (where she should be) and she has changed.
Takeaway: The world is changing and Christianity is changing with it.
Mark Noll is one of the most important academics of Christianity in the world. He is a historian, but the implications of his work go far beyond history. Personally, the most important book of his that I have read it The Civil War and Theological Crisis. That book looked at how Christians of an earlier generation had worked through cultural change and there were many implications for how we can now work through cultural change.
In The New Shape of World Christianity, Noll makes a subtle argument. Simply, Noll argues that American Christianity is important to worldwide Christianity not so much because it is leading the world, but more because the world’s culture is changing in ways that are similar to the ways that the United States is changing. Noll is clear that it is not that the world is becoming like the US, as much as it is that the cultural pressures (globalization) that the US is facing are also facing the rest of the world. It is just that the US is a bit in front of the rest of the world in many of these cultural changes and pressures.