Tag: book lust i

In the Best Families

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Stout, Rex. In the Best Families. Bantam Books, 1950.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month.

It all starts when Nero Wolfe is contacted by Mrs. Barry Rackham for a case. She wants to hire him to find out where her husband is getting all of his spending cash. She holds the purse strings in the marriage and has admitted to doling out less than he asks for each month; sometimes giving him nothing at all. Since Mrs. Rackham doesn’t want her husband to know she is aware of his spending habits she tells Wolfe he is needed to investigate the death of one of her dogs as cover. Of course it is up to Archie Goodwin to travel to Westchester to investigate the dogs and the money. Of course it wouldn’t be a Nero Wolfe mystery without a murder, but that comes later.
For those of you who love Archie Goodwin’s sarcasm, wit and humor, fear not! Archie continues to make his audiences chuckle. Here is an example: he needed to look up the word “handsome” after a female character used the word to describe Nero Wolfe. Surely there was some kind of mistake? Nero handsome? But no, handsome can also mean “moderately large.” When Archie learned this he was sufficiently placated. Needless to say, it is always funny when Archie tries to get a rise out of his boss. Sometimes he is successful. Other times, not so much.
The biggest twist in In the Best Families is Nero leaving his beloved brownstone. Everyone knows Nero is loathe to leave the confines of his abode. He takes some drastic measures this time around. There are some other surprising twists that break away from the typical formulaic Stout mystery.
It is always a great joy when there is continuity between books in a series. I especially love when characters come back again and again. Arnold Zeck, first seen in And Be a Villain came back in Second Confession and reappeared in In the Best Families.

Lines that made me laugh, “Have I impressed you as the sort of boob who would jump off a building just to hear his spine crack?” (p 57).

Book trivia: Introduction was written by Julian Symons. My copy had in call-caps: NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED. Thanks!

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

Possessing the Secret of Joy

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Walker, Alice. Possessing the Secret of Joy. Washington Square Press, 1992.

Reason read: February is Alice Walker’s birth month. Read in her honor.

Alice Walker admits there is a connection between Possessing the Secret of Joy and The Color Purple. If you know your Purple you might remember Tashi as a minor character. She, among others, is back in Possessing the Secret of Joy to tell her own heartbreaking story. Except, told from the first person perspective of several different characters, Possessing the Secret of Joy is more of an ode to culture, courage, identity, and resilience. Do not be fooled by the short and deceptively simple chapters. Read carefully because details can be disjointed. One minute you are in Paris, France. The next you are in a London courtroom. Every chapter is packed with a deeper meaning. Self mutilation hints of a much larger trauma hidden beneath the surface.
At the heart of the story is Tashi/Evelyn Johnson, a tribal African woman. Despite being married to Adam, Tashi/Evelyn has Olinka society taboos tattooed in her brain. She knows is it wrong to make love in an open field; genital mutilation is the norm despite missionaries being against any kind of scarification. The mythology surrounding female circumcision and the price one pays for noncompliance is akin to the ancient practice of Chinese foot binding. When are ancestral cultural norms abolished for their cruelty and antiquity? Should ancient practices continue just because of the history? Are tribal roots deep enough to forego life-altering violence?

Confessional: Even though the list of characters is relatively short I wanted to keep notes on them, especially since Tashi is also Evelyn. Her best friend is Olivia, the sister of Adam to whom Tashi is married. Tashi and Adam have a son, Benny. Lisette is Adam’s lover. Together, they have a son, Pierre.

Lines I loved, “That her soul had been dealt a mortal blow was plain to anyone who dared look into her eyes” (p 65), “World wars have been fought and lost; for every war is against the world and every war against the world is lost” (p 152), and “This confession, or lie, stayed my hand for many a day” (p 204).

Author fact: I think everyone knows Alice Walker also wrote The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar.

Book trivia: Walker dedicates Possessing the Secret of Joy “with tenderness and respect to the blameless vulva.” As an aside, through Walker I was introduced to the American artists, Horace Pippen and the yarn painting of the Huichol people.

Music: “It’s a High Way to Heaven,”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A…My Name is Alice” (p 1).

Briarpatch

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Thomas, Ross. Briarpatch. St. Martin’s Press, 1984.

Reason read: Ross Thomas was born in the month of February. Read in his honor.

We are introduced to Rusty/Felicity Dill as landlady and detective. Not two minutes after trying to collect on a late rent she is murdered by a car bomb outside of her building. Felicity’s brother, Benjamin Dill, while on assignment for the Senate Subcommittee for a separate matter, comes back to his hometown to investigate her murder. In the midst of grieving for his sister Dill must confront his best and oldest friend who might be an illegal arms dealer. Apart from being a great whodunnit, Briarpatch is also a game of double and triple cross. It is hard to say who can and cannot be trusted.
While the reader does not know the exact location of Dill’s hometown (somewhere in the Midwest is the guess), Thomas is sure to keep an eye on the thermometer. The constant high temperatures were almost another character in the story.
All in all, I felt that Thomas was hoping to have a trick ending; one crafty enough to surprise everyone. Unfortunately, he pulled back the curtain a little too far and a little too early in the plot. Thomas revealed too much for the ending to be much of a shock.

Odd musings: I identified with the one character who dies within the first few pages. You could say I built a rapport with her ghost. As a kid Felicity would read eight or nine books at a time…sometimes as many as ten in a week. She took notes as she read and kept a dictionary on hand. This is me to a tee.
A childhood memory – when Ben visits Felicity’s apartment he sees a TV Guide on the coffee table. When I was growing up I had a neighbor who collected TV Guides. Stacks and stacks of them lined her bedroom floor. What she ever did with them, I have no idea.
As an aside, was the misspelling of Jim Beam deliberate?
As another aside, I thought a bread knife was an odd choice for a weapon. Wasn’t there anything a little sharper lying around.

Author fact: Ross Thomas was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma which is why some people think Ben and Felicity Dill were from Oklahoma City.

Book trivia: my copy of Briarpatch promised a “television series coming soon.” That was in 1984. I had to look it up. On IMDB I found a television series starring Rosario Dawson. Briarpatch won an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1985.

Music: “September Song,” Bach, Beatles, Beethoven, Yves Montand, “Blue Skies,” “Amazing Grace,” “Abide with Me,” “Taps,” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Ross Thomas: Too Good To Miss” (p 234).

Ender’s Shadow

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Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Shadow. Starscape, 2002.

Reason read: even though the Ender series ended with Children of the Mind many people consider Ender’s Shadow book #5. Orson Scott Card admitted Ender’s Shadow is not sequential to Children of the Mind because it does not continue the story, but rather goes back to the beginning of Ender’s Game.

In a dystopian world of twelve year old hookers and grade school street gangs, this is the story of undersized and super smart Bean. You might remember him as a minor character from Ender’s Game when Bean was in battle school with Ender. In Ender’s Shadow Orson Scott Card takes us back to Bean’s beginning where survival was only for the smartest. Bean is so smart you have to wonder if he is indeed human and not some genetically altered freak. This was my favorite Card book yet. I loved the character of Bean. I liked seeing a different side of the same story as Ender’s Game. The end of Ender’s Shadow was also a welcomed surprise.

Line I liked was actually spoken by Bean when talking to Sister Carlotta, “He can kiss you and kill you, if he hates you enough” (p 52).

Book trivia: Card said that Ender’s Shadow is a companion read to Ender’s Game. They are actually the exact same story, just told from different points of view. It reminded me of Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris. The same story told three different ways.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Valleys of the Assassins

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Stark, Freya. Valleys of the Assassins, and Other Persian Travels. Century Publishing Company, 1936.

Reason read: Stark was born in the month of January. Read in her honor.

There is no doubt that Freya wanted to live a life full of adventure that was challenging, rewarding, and more than a little dangerous. While she carried letters of introduction to give her access to key people, Freya relied heavily on her own wits to maintain her safety while in Persia. She recognized villains when she saw them. She played upon her novelty, knowing no European woman had ever been in various regions before. She would further confound the natives by putting the fragments of a skull in a jar as a keepsake or best them at their customs of all possible polite greetings and the responses one could go through. Freya demonstrated her sense of humor even when she was in sticky situations. Her attempt to find hidden treasure in a cave was both heroic and hilarious.
When people asked Freya why she wanted to travel the way that she did she blamed “the trouble” on an aunt after this relative sent Freya a copy of Arabian Nights for her 9th birthday. Freya was instantly bitten by the adventure bug. Most children would snuggle down in their beds and dream of spitting camels and endless sand, but Stark’s dreams took her to ride real camels across real deserts. Confessional: Freya never mentions camels. Her mode of transportation was a mule.
Part One takes the reader through Luristan, as it was a country where one is less frequently murdered, but the threat is not completely out of the question. As Freya maps the area for British Intelligence her actions put her in constant danger of being thought of as a spy. At the same time, Freya becomes a healer of sorts; being called upon to parse out quinine and castor oil; administer care for for snake bites, broken limbs and mysterious ailments.
Throughout Valleys of the Assassins are wonderful full page photographs. My favorite is of Keram Khan with his majestic horse and magnificent coat.

Lines I loved, “…looking at me with the calm innocence of a Persian telling lies” (p 38), “This would have proved a perfectly sound and successful theory if a buried treasure had not come to complicate my plans” (p 62) and “The study of history necessarily leads one into lonely places” (p 136).
Who knew Stark had such a sense of humor, “The great and almost only comfort to being a women is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one in and no one is surprised” (p 67). She says this while trying to argue the truth about a lunar eclipse.
Here’s one more, “So kind is fortune if you trust her” (p 195).

Author fact: Stark wrote a plethora of books about her various adventures. I am reading a total of five for the Challenge. I have finished all but one.

Book trivia: the reprint of Valleys of the Assassins coincided with Freya’s 90th birthday and the cover is of a Garabagh carpet in detail.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Lady Travelers” (p 142). Pearl says this is the one to read if you are only going to read one Freya Stark book.

Children of the Mind

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Card, Orson Scott. Children of the Mind. Tor Books, 2002.

Reason read: started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.

Children of the Mind is the second half of Xenocide which explains why the residents of planet Luistania are still looking for a way to escape the decimation of their planet. This is also the final book in the Ender quartet. The survival of the children of the mind hinges on Computer Jane’s ability to move the humans, buggers, and pequeninos to a more hospital planet for colonization without overtaxing her bandwidth. Every jump takes her down a notch. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin, Ender’s older brother, travels to meet with the Starways Congress to convince them to stop their campaign to destroy Lusitania. Only Peter isn’t Peter. He is another entity of Ender. In fact, Ender has three bodies: his own, Peter’s and Young Valentine’s. Children of the Mind, like the other books in the series gets a little didactic and preachy.
I have to wonder how many people freaked out when they got to the demise of Ender as we know him.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 224).

Selfish Gene

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Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Reason read: every January people make resolutions all about bettering themselves. It’s all about them. In honor of those “it’s all about me” resolutions I am reading a book about being selfish and the explanation for why.

Richard Dawkins wants you to ignore the word selfish in his book’s title and concentrate more on the word gene. He confessed that “misunderstandings of Darwinism” are what originally “provoked” him to write The Selfish Gene. [Point of view: At the time of publication he was a professor at Oxford University and considered The Selfish Gene a “new” way of looking at ourselves. Keep in mind Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene fifty years ago.] Like a chef laying out a beautifully set table before his meal, Dawkins takes care to define the words selfish and altruistic. He wants to make sure you are grounded in the facts he is about to present before you. He is careful to explain how words get lost in translation. For example, take the Septuagint – Hebrew for young woman into Greek for virgin and what transpires is the virgin giving birth to a holy son.
Dawkins repeatedly uses the word “simplified” to assure his readers that he has dumbed down his scientific subject matter as much as he could without turning The Selfish Gene into a See Jane Run book for toddlers. He uses humor and folksy language to further put his reader at ease. Fear not! This is a good book.

Quote to quote, “For instance a ion wants to eat an antelope’s body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body” (p 89).

Author fact: Dawkins published seven books after The Selfish Gene. I am reading one more, The Blind Watchmaker. At the time of publication, Dawkins was working on the computer simulation of cricket song to determine the basis of female attraction.

Book trivia: as an aside, Dawkins tells a story about the underground “parasol” ants of South America. They live in colonies of over two million and live deep underground.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Genuine Genes” (p 96).

Three Doors To Death

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Stout, Rex. Three Doors to Death: a Nero Wolfe Threesome. Viking Press, 1949.

Reason read: I first started the series fifteen books ago in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month.

Man Alive (published in December 1947) – A man once thought to be dead of suicide is found dead again.
Omit Flowers (published in November 1948) – as a favor to a friend, Nero Wolfe takes on the wrongful accusation of murder. Virgil Pompa, a restaurant chain manager has been fingered for the crime.
Door to Death (published in June 1949) – my favorite of the bunch. Nero’s caretaker of over 10,000 orchids, Theodore Horstmann, has taken leave indefinitely to care for his ailing mother. This abandonment is absolutely unacceptable to Wolfe. The travesty forces him to leave his beloved brownstone to recruit a replacement who has, of course, been charged with murder.

As an aside, for as many times as Archie says Nero never leaves his brownstone, I wonder if someone has actually counted up all the times he has and why.

Author fact: Stout passed away at the age of eighty-eight.

Book trivia: to track Stout’s publications one has to be pretty savvy. Three Doors to Death is comprised of three novellas which were published as stand alone stories. The three stories were republished in a collection called Five of a Kind.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

Xenocide

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Card, Orson Scott. Xenocide. Macmillan Audio, 2004.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Science Fiction month.

As Orson Scott Card moves away from the childlike narrative of Ender’s Game the series becomes more deeply philosophical. In each subsequent Ender novel, Card questions the argument surrounding free will. Xenocide expands on these ideas as it examines cultural differences, religious ideology and the ethics of destroying a race because of its potential danger. Card takes his readers to the planet Lusitania where humans (including Andrew Wiggin and his family), the Pequeninos (Piggies), and the Hive Queen are all under threat by the Starways Congress. The Congress is hellbent on blowing up the planet because they fear the Descolada virus which is essential to the Pequeninos but deadly to humans. Card keeps Ender and his family mostly in the background as he explores these heavier concepts. I found it to be heavy mucking.

Book Audio trivia: there is a whole cast of narrators for Xenocide: Scott Brick, Gabrielle de Cuir, Amanda Karr, John Rubinstein, and Stefan Rudnicki.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Long Marriage

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Kumin, Maxine. The Long Marriage. W.W. Norton and Company, 2002.

Reason read: I read somewhere that January 26th is Marriage Day.

In The Long Marriage Maxine Kumin is keen to describe what she sees in the viewfinder of life. She stares down uncomfortable topics like suicide and crime with unflinching clarity. From the community of Grays Point to gardening to the struggle of rehabilitation after an accident. She even reflects on her own injuries from being thrown from a horse: punctured lung, eleven broken ribs, and a bruised liver…just to name a few. Her poems are life jumping off the page and, dare I say, into your heart.
Poems I enjoyed the most:

  • Skinny dipping with William Wordsworth – remembering her days as a Radcliffe student, studying Wordsworth. She paints a picture of a passionate youth and the aftermath of a romance long cooled by time and war.
  • Thinking of Gorki While Clearing a Trail – Who is Saturnine Gorki? 1929 International Congress of Atheists.
  • Imagining Marianne Moore in the Butterfly Garden – another beautiful tribute.
  • Capital Punishment – why are we allowed to see gruesome mutilations (the victims of Sierra Leone) and yet spared the benign execution of Benny Demps?
  • Rilke Revisited – another ode to a great writer.
  • Why There Will Always Be Thistle – I need to read this to my husband. He can’t stand thistles.
  • Pantoum, with Sawn – ode to Helen of Troy
  • Calling out of Gray’s Point – charming poem about Purvis, the phone repair man who has been trying to fix the line.
  • The Exchange – line I liked the best: “the neophyte animal psychic who visits my barn at midday”…okay.
  • Highway Hypothesis – imagining the neighbors.
  • Game of Nettles – confessional: while Kumin is remembering a childhood game of playing with nettles, I have a darker reminiscing. I can remember being five or six years and being whipped with nettles by the much older boys. Oh how they laughed.

Author fact: Maxine Kumin was friends with Anne Sexton.

Book trivia: there is a beautiful picture of the author and her husband and their dogs. Kumin’s dedication to Victor, “on the dark lake” is beautiful, too.

Natalie connections: In Miss Merchant’s song, “Sister Tilly” she talks about the kind of woman who reads Rilke poems. Kumin has a poem about Rilke.
Natalie was the first person to introduce me to the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Kumin quotes him in The Long Marriage.

Confessional: Peter Gabriel celebrated the album So by doing an anniversary tour. I could not think of the poet to whom he dedicated “—.” All I could remember was the line, “Anne with her father is out in the boat.” Kumin mentions Anne Sexton by name. Mystery solved…although I could have just looked at the liner notes.

Music: Pee Wee Russell, Jack Teagarden, Erroll Garner, and Glenn Miller.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Prose by Poets” (p 194).

Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

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Morris, Arthur Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Read by Mark Deakins.

Reason read: in honor of Roosevelt, the first American statesman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

When one thinks of Theodore Roosevelt, it is the big teeth, the massive mustache, the burly figure, and maybe the fact Roosevelt lost his wife and mother on the same day [Alice, of Bright’s disease and Mittie of typhoid fever, respectively]. In The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Morris covers Theodore Roosevelt’s complicated and robust life up until the presidency. He skillfully reminds his reader about Roosevelt the author who wrote over a dozen histories and biographies to supplement his salary as an Assemblyman; Roosevelt the candidate who lost the bid to be mayor of New York; Roosevelt the complicated man who adored the west and had his heart set on becoming a rancher in the Badlands; Roosevelt the Harvard graduate; Roosevelt the police commissioner; Roosevelt the Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Roosevelt the naturalist; Roosevelt the family man. While Alice was the love of his life he managed to remarry (Edith Carow) and go on to have a happy family of six children. Morris also painted Roosevelt as a contradiction in health. Doctors deemed the future president a sickly asthmatic who somehow was able to perform great feats of athleticism like climbing mountains, hunting for days and hiking long distances.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is thoroughly researched and highly entertaining. As an aside, I adored the ending.

As an aside, I would love to visit the Roosevelt mansion at 6 West 57th Street in Manhattan.

Author fact: Morris was born in Nairobi.

Book trivia: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt has a great collection of black and white photographs.

Music: “America,” Gilbert and Sullivan, Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, “Marching Through Georgia,” “Star Spangled Banner,” “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” “The Union Forever,” “My Country Tis of Thee,” “The White Plume,” and “Hail to the Chief.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Presidential Biographies” (p 192).

Second Confession

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Stout, Rex. Second Confession. G.K. Hall and Co., 1992.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November of 2024. I am now a year into the Nero Wolfe series.

It all starts when a father wants to hire Nero Wolfe to confirm or deny his daughter’s fiancé is not a Communist. James Sperling believes his daughter’s suitor needs to be investigated before they marry. At first Nero is reluctant to take the case for he knows Sperling has connections to the mafia. That is the least of his troubles when the man in question is found murdered and all evidence points to Nero. [Stout likes vehicular homicide and it is Wolfe’s vehicle with the blood evidence.]
It is rare that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone in New York City as the country makes him nervous, yet, in Second Confession Wolfe finds himself in Chappaqua, just above White Plains, New York. Another variance of this Nero Wolfe mystery is a different set of law enforcement running interference. Despite these differences, fear not! Archie is his old sarcastic witty self.

As an aside, I truly enjoy learning more about the highly entertaining Archie Goodwin. This time we learn he has gone to high school in Ohio.

Lines I liked, “I wouldn’t go to the extreme of calling him a cheap filthy little worm, but he is in fact a shabby creature” (p 93) and “There are numerous layers of honesty, and the deepest should not have a monopoly” (p 276).

Author fact: Rex Stout served as chairman of the war writer’s board.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 209).

Avalon

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Lawhead, Stephen R. Avalon: the Return of King Arthur. Avon, 1999.

Reason read: King Arthur was born in December…supposedly.

The is a classic tale of the struggle between good and evil. Cast as the power hungry antagonist is Prime Minister Thomas Waring. When the last King of England committed suicide Waring was under the impression he would lead England from his seat in government. Out of nowhere along comes James Stuart, an apparent nobody with all the credentials to prove it is he who is actually next in line for the throne. All of the characters you expect from King Arthur’s time are represented in modern day Britain. Ancient enemies are present with a modern day twist.
My favorite parts were when James experiences fiosachd, a kind of mental time travel where he can see his surroundings in a medieval light. Sights and sounds shimmer into his mind like a memory but appear before him as real as his own skin. Modern day dissolves to reveal a time before time.
My least favorite part was the relationship with Jenny. She rebuffs James and seems to fancy another until she does a surprising 180.

Confessional: I went back and forth about whether or not Avalon was part of the Pendragon series. In the end I decided it wasn’t because I couldn’t care enough if it was or wasn’t.

Book trivia: Avalon is the LAST book in the Pendragon Cycle series (according to Lawhead’s website). Once again, I have read these books out of order.

Author fact: several of Lawhead’s books have been made into television series for 2025.

Music: “Auld Lang Syne,” “Bowl of Punch Reel,” Gerry Rafferty, “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” “Amazing Grace,” “We Rest on Thee,” “Wedding March,” “O Worship the King,” “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” “Scotland the Brave,” and “Be Thou My Vision.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “King Arthur” (p 136). What Pearl does not tell you is that at the time of the publication of Book Lust, Avalon was the last book in the Pendragon Cycle series.

Life Among the Savages

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Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages. Narrated by Lesa Lockford. Dreamscape Media, 2015.
Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages. Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953.

Reason read: December is Jackson’s birth month. Read in her honor.

This is a delightful series of essays about being a mother and wife in a large family. Jackson has four children in a very chaotic home. She attacks each subject whether it be education, childbirth, failings of the furnace and automobile or life with a cat with wit, sarcasm, humor, and humility. This was a great way to pass a rainy afternoon. I look forward to her other nonfictions as well as the fiction on my list.
Confessional: There were times I wanted to strangle her children but refrained from throwing the book across the room when I realized there potentially could be a fair amount of exaggeration in Jackson’s descriptions.

Author fact: Pearl misfiled Life Among the Savages under ghost stories because Jackson also wrote the very creepy short story “the Lottery.”

Book trivia: try to find the version with Lesa Lockford as narrator. It is fantastic.

Music: “Joy to the world,” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the odd chapter called “Ghost Stories” (p 100). I say odd because Life Among Savages is not a ghost story. It is just mentioned because Jackson did write a scary story or two.

Speaker for the Dead

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Card, Orson Scott. Speaker for the Dead. Macmillan Audio, 2006.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.

As a small child, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin saved planet Earth from war with the Buggers. Now as an earthly yet ageless thirty five year old adult, Ender is faced with a second alien invasion with the piggies. War seems to be inevitable. Ender has transformed himself into a Speaker for the Dead and must reconcile his horrible past as Ender Wiggin the Xenocide. Not many know he is one and the same. It is a dance of identity to come to terms with the past.
I found it interesting to learn that in order for Speaker for the Dead to work Ender’s Game had to be a full blown novel. The sequel actually birthed the first book’s existence.
As an aside, I do not know how Speaker for the Dead can be pigeon holed into the genre of science fiction when it carries themes of philosophy, religion, family, psychology, religion, socio-economics, ethics, ecology, genetics, mysticism, hatred, and science.
I applaud any book that makes the reader feel something whether intended or not. If the author can be clever enough to hide personal feelings while promoting an unfavorable view, more power to him or her. Speaker for the Dead made me laugh and cry, hate and love, all at the same time.
The best part of Speaker for the Dead was Ender’s conversation with the Bishop about death – how another culture could see death as the greatest honor.

Line I liked, “I think, said Ender, that you should not plant anymore humans” (p 415).

Author fact: to look at Orson Scott Card’s list of books is impressive. I am only reading seven Ender books for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Speaker for the Dead is an indirect sequel to Ender’s Game. You can get by without reading Ender, but why would you want to?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).