Bladerunner Soundtrack
I finished a couple books tonight:
The Outline of History, Volume I – Ancient History, By HG Wells, 412 pages
I started reading this book when I realized that my knowledge of the whole of world history was quite lacking. It was written around 1920, revised in 1930, revised again in 1940 (and after that, but not by Wells himself), the copy I have was published in 1940. It’s obviously a generally European-centric view of history, and since this records history from the “beginning of time” it does have a few facts out of place, but generally I learned to take that with a grain of salt. It did try to gather some Asian history, although at the time of writing a lot of that history was still closed off to the western world. Still it did give me quite a good outline for reference. And since it was written by Wells it was not as dry and boring as most historical accounts. I really did enjoy this, and read it slowly, over the course of several months along with other books, to get a firm grasp on the information, so I’d remembered more. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to further their basic knowledge of ancient history.
Treasure Box, By Orson Scott Card, 372 pages
If someone had told me what this book was about prior to my reading it I probably never would have. I’m glad they didn’t, I couldn’t put it down, keep this in mind. It tells the strange tale of a millionaire former computer programmer who in his mid 30s realizes he is alone and his life unfulfilled. He finds the perfect woman at a dinner party and before they know much about each other are happily married. Everything goes well for about a year, until he goes to meet her family, from there the book takes a turn for the extraordinary. The last half of the book deals with witches, a ‘beast’, the discovery of a powerful succubus, and of course the never-ending battle between good and evil. Sounds cheesy right? No, Card has an amazing talent for making the main character endearing to the reader, so when you read this book you ARE this character and you feel what he is feeling, you can understand the emotions of this character and how he is simply a pawn in his formally normal life that has been transformed into a nightmare. Even the ending, though moderately abrupt, ties off loose ends and leaves the reader feeling satisfied. I loved this book, I put off doing things so I could finish it in just under three days, I’ll definitely be reading it again sometime.