I love books (and hilarious online video thingies)

I've been meaning to check out Goodreads for a while now, and this evening I finally got around to it (along with discovering the delightful online series The Guild). It would be madness to try to go back and write reviews for all of my favorite books, but there are a some books that are too dear to me for a simple star rating to suffice, and I'll cross post them here (I'm also filling in some of them with past posts from here in which I talked about books I'd read).

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ender's Game captured elements of my childhood that no other work of fiction (or anything in any other medium) has ever presented in a way that felt believable. There have been countless works in which I sympathize with the protagonist, but the character of Ender captured something about me that I probably couldn't even have articulated before I read the book.


Dune by Frank Herbert

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
The sublime is a pretty elusive quality, but my definition has always been closely tied to a sense of transport. A truly sublime work of art is that which transports me out of myself, and Dune is one of the few books that achieves that rare feat. The rush of ideas in the passage describing Paul's emergence into his power managed to produce in me a visceral sense of vertigo. It's hard to imagine a more compelling example of the power of fiction.


Paradise Lost by John Milton

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Milton's masterpiece is not only the greatest epic ever written in English verse, it has actually had significant influence on the way that people think about the Christian mythology. In my conversations with mainstream Christians, the things that they say about things like angels and Satan are much more consistent with the way that those concepts are depicted in Paradise Lost than how they a represented in the Bible.


His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This trilogy starts off as a seemingly simple jaunt into the realm of adventurous fantasy, but the intellectual depth quickly reveals itself. Few books even attempt capture the agony of the conflict between romance and responsibility, and of the few that try, it's rare to see an author avoid the slippery slope of melodrama. The worlds that Pullman conjures are magnificent in and of themselves, but his true achievement is that he captures the joy and pain of growing up without romanticizing childhood or looking down on it.


View all my reviews.



Also, if you haven't checked out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, what are you waiting for? Act II is up now (and is even more super-awesome than Act I). Even my friend Ben, who hates musicals, loved it, so nobody who is reading this has any excuse for not checking it out this weekend while it's still available for free (magic word!). I'll be done with my MA soon, so you'd better take my advice lest you find yourself on the wrong side of a guy with a PhD in Horribleness (I hear Duke offers five years of funding).

Some Guy Who Beat Duke for Governor!

It's March, so it must be time to loathe the student-athletes of Duke University.

It is an interesting question whether there is a genuine competitive advantage to being hated and feared as a sports team. It certainly helps your players' confidence, and it is possible that it makes it easier to intimidate opponents, but it also means that no one overlooks you and you always get your opponents' best shot. The Duke men's basketball team has actively cultivated that sentiment, and they are far and away the most universally disliked team in college basketball.

I have no particular reason to dislike Duke as a school, but along with the rivals of the two schools I've attended and any school that's ever rejected me, they are one of the few teams that I actively root against in the NCAA tournament. I was disappointed on Thursday when they narrowly escaped being the victim of a gigantic upset at the hands of the lowly Belmont Bruins, and I happily followed all of the action today as they were beaten solidly by West Virginia in their second round game.

Beating Duke is an achievement that will probably be remembered far more fondly than anything else they achieve in this tournament. I couldn't help smiling when one of the CBS commentators shouted, "He's gonna get votes for governor!" after the second of a couple of key plays by a West Virginia player to seal Duke's defeat.