February Book Challenge

 Book competition so far

Feb *3 A book with a red cover (“lucky” color)

2001 (a Space Odyssey #1)

Author: Arthur Clarke

Genre: Science Fiction

Number of pages: 297

First published: 1968

Setting: Space in 2001

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of terrible lizards long since ended.

One sentence comment: It’s enjoyable for a non SF fan like me because the plot evolves from the root of present science and doesn’t get into far-fetched fantasy.

 

          I should have read this book before a couple of unfavorable more recent SF books. Perhaps I would have developed an overjoyed preference for the SF genre. The author took an interesting and realistic view of human development by first introducing a man-ape called, Moon-Watcher. It was a great imagination and I was feeling very much touched by their primeval life and challenges.

          Then the time jumped into the imaginative 2001 and we found humans already had self-support life system on the Moon. What’s surprising was that the digital newspaper was on! The author had predicted the digital era during the 1960’s. Shortly after, I was put into a spaceship with two humans and one robot to travel outward from the solar system. We got into closer encounters with asteroids and Jupiter.

          The journey’s final goal was Saturn. My criticism is on the last few dozens of pages, which changed from science into complete fantasy, completely leaving the author’s orbit of science.

Feb *4 Free Pick: Happy Lunar New Year! (classic of this month)

Ethan Frome

Author: Edith Wharton

Genre: fiction

Number of pages: 113

First published: 1911

Setting: Massachusetts, US

Rating: 5 stars

First sentence: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

One sentence comment: The tragic story reflects the age-old argument about fate and free-will.

 Told from Ethan’s point of view, the story showed how pathetic he was but only one old woman showed pity on him. He might seem irresponsible but he had struggled with both pride and shame. To the brink of getting money to run away, he was called back by his conscience not to take advantage of those who had sympathy for him. I was quite moved by his inner dialogues. Through the author’s artistic reporting of details, my heart was caught by what was going to happen to the poor man when death and horror seemed to hover over him forever. This book is going to be my favorite of the month.

 

Feb *2 A book with one of the words from “Year of the Dragon” in the title

The bear and the dragon

Author: Tom Clancy

Genre: political thriller

Page number: 1137

First published: 2000

Setting: Moscow, Beijing, and Washington DC modern time

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: Going to work was the same everywhere, and the changeover from Marxism-Leninism to Chaos-Capitalism hadn’t changed matters much – well, maybe things were now a little worse.

One sentence comment: It’s amazing to see an assassination bring about a panoramic view of three major powers in our era.

        Spending two months reading this book, I glanced through a mocking review about this book saying that Clancy try to write War and Peace, by bursting with numerous Russian names leading to a war.  I don’t like a large cast but I like him delving into psychological and theological discussion.

          Concerning the plot, the first thing that stroke interest is the talks of building Russia’s gas pipeline to the west with technical supports from American companies, which would be earning billions of dollars. After 23 years of the book’s publication, Europe had to suffer from the dependency on cheaper oil from Russia after the war on Ukraine. The actual pipeline Stream 1 was built in 2010. Clancy’s book was like a prophecy.

This book tackles a lot of cross culture issues, such as American Mafia, the west tradition versus KGB. It’s also a book to understand modern China. The character Ming had grown up under the shadow of one-child policy. She worked for a minister and experienced sex exploitation, which she saw as part of her job. An infanticide eventually led to a clash between China and the US. In case a westerner does not understand this issue, the book provides ruthless explanations. After the brief mentioning of Falun Gong, Ming said that ‘ communism remains a jealous system of belief.’ This story line is excellent and dramatic but not exaggerating at all.

Another intriguing line is to find out the murder in the beginning of the book, who and why. It’s surprising to see that the Russian investigator Lieutenant Paovalov was so friendly with the FBI agent Reilly, that he relied on the US to provide help. The book is full of sarcastic and humorous comments. One of most funny is that when a medium intelligent diplomat was used as a spy, we were told that it wasted a lot of time for counterintelligence people, making them trail dumb diplomats who turned out to be nothing more than just that – dumb diplomat – of which the global supply was ample.

In sum, the events and things discussed in this chunkster is overwhelming. My criticism is that the plot tends to drag  too long. Like a long running TV series, if you jump in the middle, you don’t feel you have missed anything.

Feb *1 A book with an Asian/Chinese protagonist, or author, or setting

 

Author: Shamini Flint

Genre: Mystery

Number of pages: 295

First published: 2009

Setting: Malaysia

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: The accused, Chelsea Liew, was in court.

One sentence comment: It’s a culture-relevant and informative novel about three major Asian countries, Singapore, Malaysia and China.

This book taught me more about Singapore and Malaysia. I was amazed by the mentioning of the tension between these two countries. Singapore is more progressive but authoritative. Malaysia is a Moslem country; therefore, if a man converts to Moslem, his under-aged children automatically become Moslems, so that the custody will be decided in the Moslem court. In the same way, the man’s inheritance will be dissolved in the Moslem court.

          Through this book, I knew another shocking atrocity from China. Because of the flooding around the Yangtze River, Chinese government cracked down hard on logging. However all the major forests from other Asian countries were exploited and disappeared. This is why I shouldn’t read Asian books because I can not avoid reading detested things about China.

          I think there is a great weakness about the plot. How could the Malaysian police threw people into prison without further evidence, such as a murder weapon or a witness? I can’t read a modern mystery as if the story happened in the Middle Ages.