Books books books books books...

Hello again, audience! How are you today? I'm pretty swell myself. I've still been feeling useless lately, but I've also had this mysterious streak of thoughtfulness. Twice in the last three days, I've had spontaneous conversations about philosophy and human nature with my soultwin Poncho, and it has been really exciting. That added to being pushed to write another blog has led me to the keyboard where I am now typing this.

I've decided that this blog, as indicated by the title, is going to be about books. I've read two in the last five days or so, which is actually a slow pace for me, but still carnivorous nonetheless. I love to read, and I can usually pick apart books in a single afternoon, as I have done with a couple books I'm about to mention. So, this time around I'm going to talk about some of my favorite books and the authors who made them a reality. First though, I'm going to talk about the books I have been reading lately.

I'm a Star Wars fan, and more specifically a fan of Old Republic events, way before the movies happened. The good old days when the Sith were running rampant trying to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic and rule the galaxy through the Dark Side of the Force. So when Poncho's boyfriend handed me a book titled Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, I couldn't help but be excited. It's about a miner named Des who, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, ends up on the run from Republic soldiers and joins the Sith army as a last resort. Through further circumstances, he ends up being chosen to be a Sith Apprentice at the Academy on Korriban. Now, I don't want to spoil the plot, because my hope is that you will go pick up this book and devour it like I did. But, I want to get this across: Darth Bane is unlike any Sith that has ever existed. He not only tracks down three Sith holocrons from planets across the galaxy and learns ancient secrets forgotten for generations. It was his idea to narrow the Sith order down to only two members at any time; one master and one apprentice. That way, the order couldn't be undermined and weakened by ambitious apprentices teaming up to kill their master. He also does mind blowing things through the Dark Side. Absolutely mind blowing. I read the entire trilogy over the course of two weeks, I think, and it only took that long because I had to wait to get the next book from Poncho's boyfriend. I love those books.

Next up is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I have been told repeatedly by various people to read this book, and I got my hands on a copy earlier this year, but I didn't read it till the other day. And I must say, I'm disappointed in myself for not reading it sooner. It's about the third child Andrew, a rare event in this future, in a family of apparent genius children. Andrew and his older siblings are intelligent in a way that people now only see in movies and tv shows. Andrew gets picked to go to Battle School at age 6, younger than anyone before him, to train to be a fleet commander. The humans were attacked by Buggers, an alien species, twice in the past and survived thanks to Mazer Rackham, a genius strategist. Now the humans are preparing for a Third Invasion, and it's up to Ender to be trained and prepared to lead the fleet. Except that he doesn't know he's being conditioned. Everything is done in secret, so that he is not given the opportunity to refuse the plans they have set out for him. Now, i'm a fan of science fiction and space battles and the like, but a book about school has never really appealed to me. It even took me till I was 15 or so to touch Harry Potter because it never really sounded that good. But this is more than just a book about starfleet academy or whatever. It's a story about a boy being shaped and molded by events, a boy who is a better strategist and commander at age 8 than most adults are, a boy who is destined to save the world from an insurmountable enemy fleet and become a legend. It's fantastic beyond anything I can describe.

Now, onto my favorites. First off is Stephen King, and just about anything he has ever written. I was introduced to him when I borrowed The Gunslinger off my dad's bookshelf. It's the first in Stephen King's longest and biggest project, The Dark Tower series. It's a 7 book series, but unlike Harry Potter, this one is targeted to a more mature audience. It's a dark fantasy fairy tale about a man named Roland Deschain, the last Gunslinger, in search of his nemesis, the ever mysterious Man in Black. This is one of the books I read in a single evening. From the first sentence, Stephen King kidnaps you to a world that has 'moved on', decaying from old age and the efforts of someone trying to bring about the end of the universe as we know it by destroying the fabled Dark Tower that lies at the center of everything. Over thirty years and seven books, King defies all storytelling that has come before him and completely blows away every other fantasy series I have ever read. And the end of the seventh book, The Dark Tower, will FOREVER be my favorite ending to a book or series, though The Dream of Perpetual Motion comes very close.

Now, The Dark Tower series is not the only King i'm a fan of. One of the conversations with Poncho was about Needful Things, another book by King that explores humanity and the idea that everyone will sell their soul if given the right price. I've also read The Eyes of the Dragon, 'Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, Dreamcatcher, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Skeleton Crew, and i'm currently working on Everything's Eventual. The thing I love about King is his mastery of his genre. He knows what scares people, what's creepy, what haunts your dreams and nightmares, and he knows how to bring those things to life with words. Not only do you fall in love with his writing, you eventually grow to love the man himself, through the little bits of himself he leaves in introductions and afterwords. And the short story collections are even better, because he often tells where he got the idea for each of his stories and the strange or weird tales behind their publishing. I've barely scratched the surface of his 40+ novels, but I intend to continue reading until I catch up.

This is the part where I go into obsessive fan mode and talk about my very favorite book, The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer. I mentioned it before, but now I get to really talk about it and how much I love it, rather than just praising it and giving you a link to buy it. Harold Winslow is locked aboard the good ship chrysalis, powered by a perpetual motion machine built by Prospero Taligent, the mechanical wizard and father of Miranda Taligent, the girl whose face has haunted Harold's dreams for most of his life and whose voice now haunts the metal halls of the Chrysalis. Harold recounts the tale of how he came to be trapped aboard the zeppelin and his tragic history with Miranda and Prospero.

The book is set in a steampunk world where Prospero has invented all sorts of wonders and the sound of machines is never far off. It's heavily based on the plot of Shakespeare's Tempest, and I highly recommend it to anyone who liked the original, but it's not just a cheap copy. Palmer reinvents the story and brings it to a whole new universe, while adding his own underlying themes. There's something haunting about the parallels we can draw between Harold's strange world and our own, and the slow decay of everything that once meant something to people. Not only does reading this book have the side effect of understanding better the depression of old people when confronted with this newfangled technology and the changing of times, but the ending literally makes me giggle with excitement every single time. I highly recommend reading and re-reading this book until you can't help but bring it up every single time someone is talking about books or Shakespeare or steampunk or anything at all. You just have to talk about this book once you've read it. I made Poncho read it so that I could rant about how much I loved it to her.

That's all for now, but I'll surely have more installments about books in the future, because I love them way too much to not rant about them every once in a while. In review, Poncho is my soultwin, she is a female, and she has a boyfriend; my girlfriend made me write this blog and now i'm kind of happy because I have a lighter topic to return to and be excited about on occasion; Darth Bane is the greatest Sith ever and his books ruined the rest of the Star Wars books about normal characters or Jedi for me; Ender is a super genius destined to save the human race and his book made me double take at the climax; Stephen King's Dark Tower series makes me an inordinately happy person, and is soooo worth reading despite being impossibly long; and Dexter Palmer's very first novel made a lifetime fan out of me at the drop of a hat. I think that I may have gotten something done today.

So! Until next time, ambiguous audience, I order you to run down to your local bookstore and buy a hard copy of one of these books and read it and then tell me what you think. I'll have to rant about hard copy versus eBook another day...