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.
