Books about Books

This is a translation from my original post over at the Cave.

After reading Ivanius' beautiful article about Ivanius about libraries, I went on a small recursive loop that resulted in a short list of books where books are main characters or motors of the story.

• The Name of the Rose
  By Umberto Eco: During the XIV century, an eery benedictine monastery is silent witness to a rash of murders related to a misterious book hidden within its library.
  
  
  
• The Dumas Club
  By Arturo Pérez-Reverte: An antique book hunter gets into grave trouble while researching an original manuscript of The Three Musketeers and an ancient book supposedly written by devil worshippers.
  
  
  
• The Neverending Story
  By Michael Ende: An introverted boy finds a book called the Neverending Story; reading it, he finds himself one of the characters involved in the rescue of Fantasia from the Nothing.
  
• The Necronomicon and other stories
  This "terrible and forbidden" book comes from the imagination of HP Lovecraft and is a main character in many of his horror stories.
  
• The Myst novels: The Book of Atrus, The Book of D'ni and the Book of Ti'ana
  By Robyn and Rand Miller in collaboration with David Wingrove: Prequels to the videogame where the books literally transport the reader to different worlds with subtly different natural laws
  
  
• The Spiderwick Chronicles
  The first one of this series of books tells the tale of two children who move to a weird country house, where they find a field guide about the supernatural beings that inhabit the region.
  

Dear reader, if you think of another title, please add it to the list. I am not including anthologies nor textbooks nor reference works, although I was tempted to include Adler's and Van Doren's famous "How to read a book" for purely sentimental reasons.

Plures Libri suspendido / Taking a break from Plures Libri

No publicaré más reseñas de libros en Plures Libri.
Esto es debido a obligaciones que han absorbido el tiempo disponible para leer y bloguear.
Si hay que escoger, prefiero leer antes que bloguear.
Sin embargo, seguiré escribiendo en La Cueva y esporádicamente en SesoLibre.


I will no longer post book reviews on Plures Libri.
This is due to obligations that have eaten into what little time I have available for reading and blogging.
Having to make a choice, I'd rather read than blog.
I will however, continue posting at The Cave and sporadically at SesoLibre.

El Maestro del Mal

El Maestro del Mal - Jim Hougan

El reportero Alex Callahan está viviendo la peor pesadilla imaginable: Sus hijos gemelos de 6 años han sido secuestrados. No hay nota ni llamada exigiendo rescate, y la policía no avanza con las extrañas pistas dejadas por el secuestrador en la misma casa de Callahan: Una camisa manchada con sangre, unas monedas, una pecera con un extraño líquido, y una pieza de Origami.

Callahan comienza una investigación que abarcará las ferias medievales, el vudú y la historia de la magia para rescatar a sus hijos antes de que sea demasiado tarde.

Hay tres problemas principales con esta novela:

• El primero es con la traducción al castellano (español de España), que en algunos puntos es demasiado literal y te saca de la narrativa al tratar de descifrar qué quiso decir originalmente el autor.
  
• El segundo es con la ejecución: Aunque el tema es fuerte, la trama se desarrolla a mi gusto algo lenta, y se apoya demasiado en coincidencias.

Breve spoiler a continuación:

• El tercero es con esta maldita obsesión del malo del cuento por dejar pistas, si se supone que es brillante y no quiere que lo agarren. Me cuesta trabajo suspender la realidad con ello.
  

Entretenida lectura si no tienes otra cosa mejor que leer

ISBN - 84-08-05831-2

Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake - By Margaret Atwood

In a post apocalyptic world populated by strange hybrid creatures like wolvogs, pigoons and rakunks, a character we initially know as Snowman is slowly starving to death.

Through flashbacks we learn about a society run by corporations specializing mainly in genetic engineering, creators of the aforementioned hybrid creatures. We also learn about Snowman's obsession with a Oryx, a young girl he saw on a porn website. His best friend, a genius who goes by the nickname of Crake eventually locates and hires this girl as a teacher/prostitute.

Eventually everything goes to hell on a basket, and Snowman is apparently the only human being left, and is charged with looking after the Crakers, a new human species designed by his friend.

I must confess that I had difficulty finishing this one, and the end is too open ended for my taste.

Your mileage may vary.

ISBN 0-385-72167-6

The Ghost Brigades

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

This is the second part in John Scalzi's Heinlenesque Old Man's War books, and delves into the Special Forces of the CDF, better known as the Ghost Brigades.

In an interesting counterpoint to Old Man's War old mind in young body, Scalzi explores the young mind in an adult body, and describes in some detail the hardware and software that make possible both CDF regular and special forces, namely the BrainPal and SmartBlood technologies.

Charles Boutin, a human scientist has betrayed humanity and is working for the Obin, who are really really nasty aliens, and have crafted an alliance with other hostile species. Boutin's conciousness had been recorded and has been transferred to the body of a new Special Forces soldier named Jared Dirac. The transfer appears to have failed and Dirac is transferred to the Ghost Brigades. But Boutin's memories start to surface, and Jared races against time to understand why his "father" turned against mankind.

Highly recommended, although for more enjoyment, read Old Man first.

ISBN-10: 0765354063
ISBN-13: 978-0765354068

Old Man's War

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

If you are a Robert Heinlein fan, you are going to enjoy John Scalzi's Old Man's War books.

This first novel has a Starship Troopers flavor to it; it is narrated in the first person by John Perry, a 75 year old widower living on a very crowded Earth who enlists, and describes his experiences as he goes through the ranks in the Colonial Defense Forces, defending humanity against several alien races.

Wait a minute... isn't that kind of old to join the army? That's the premise of the whole series. I will not spoil the fun explaining how the CDF manages to create a geriatric army, but I will mention that some of the things Perry has to do during his tour of duty eventually get to him, and grows weary. But there are a couple of surprises that will keep him on his toes.

Highly recommended
ISBN 0-765-30940-8

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke

At the dawn of mankind, a mysterious monolith appears on a plain somewhere in Africa. It probes the brains of a proto-hominid tribe on the brink of starvation, and subtly changes something in their brains that enables the species to eventually evolve into homo sapiens and dominate the planet.

A few millenia later, the spacecraft Discovery is on its way to study the moons of Jupiter, but its real mission is only known to the onboard computer HAL, and one of the scientists in hibernation.
HAL grows increasingly paranoid because of the secrecy of the mission, and that is just the beginning of problems for Discovery's human crew.

The movie and book were developed at the same time. In my opinion, the book does a much better job of explaining stuff.
Although the film is considered by many one of the greatest (if not the greatest) science fiction pictures, it has been criticized as hard to understand. I would recommend rewatching it after reading the novel.

The late Arthur C. Clarke has been hailed as a visionary, having predicted communications satellites and other technologies that exist today or are very near to doing so.
What struck me most was the environmental collapse he describes in the book (and not mentioned in the movie). Sadly, it seems he wasn't off the mark there either.

A must read for any self respecting science fiction fan.

ISBN-10: 0451457994
ISBN-13: 978-0451457998