My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a stunning tour-de-force that I took on and was half way through before I realized HOW dated it was. I figured it was written in the mid-1960’s, given the level of knowledge the author possessed about the possibilities of the nature of alien life and the different species of astronomical objects he describes. I was staggered to find out it was published in 1937.

Does it read a little dated? Sure. The language is flowery and peppered with references to “Men” to describe every intelligent race. There is a narrative, but it is all told stream-of-consciousness without dialogue. “It was agreed among our party that we should continue further out into space.”

Reading this is a lot like looking at a painting by an abstract expressionist and shrugging it off until you realize it was painted when those artists were surrounded by Edwardian/Victorian stiffness as a style motif in design and popular art.

Olaf Stapledon was a true visionary–richly imaginative, but also writing a book decades beyond its time.

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Comfort food books

October 20, 2019September 12, 2021 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

10/20/19: I’ve been in a weird mood lately with my reading. A lot of my recent choices have left me cold, and when those have been purchases instead of library books, that makes me gun-shy about buying new books. Also, I often buy books only to see them in the library offerings a month later.

So I’ve been going back to the books already in my personal collection, re-reading. With audiobooks, you don’t have to put a book down to walk across a room, or do the dishes, or drive to work. You just keep listening. And listening, to me, has become a security blanket. I get edgy when my brain’s not otherwise occupied and I’m not listening to a book.

When books are your comfort food, you want to read the ones you enjoy most. I figure with… 8 books? in the Expanse series, I will have something to read until my library wait list finally coughs up its next book, or The Expanse season 4 starts, or both.

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