Couple scientists, two kids, stranded on an island with living dinosaurs. What a great
idea...the first time. Lost world seemed to be nothing more than an excuse to trap a small group of people
in an isolated space with dinosaurs. Add in some rival working against them and a couple kids to build
suspense and you have a bestseller. The Lost World seemed like the screenplay for the next movie instead
of the sequel to the modern day classic, Jurassic Park.
Iron & Silk
by Mark Salzman
Iron & Silk is easily one of the best books of the year. A complete treasury of lovable characters made
all the more wonderful by the fact that they were real people. I wanna meet the family that peed off one
side of their boat and brushed their teeth from the other. Of course, I'd have to travel to China, so I won't.
Anyway, the book is about Mark Salzman and his time spent teaching English and learning wushu in
China. Read the book; criticize the movie.
Dragons of Summer Flame
by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
All right, this book had to be written. For once and all it puts an end to Krynn. Admittedly, it was fun to read Tas' excuses for stealing stuff, and say to myself, "Oh, yeah, I remember how he always used to do that! Ha ha ha ha!" but they seemed so much better when I was in junior high. But then again most books were back then. Anyway, if you've read the Chronicles and Legends, you have to read this. And if you just despise the hundreds of other dragon-spawn books, printed and bought purely for the emblem on their title, then you'll be glad to know it's over.
(Nevermind...apparently the novel is the launching point for an entire new series about the "Fifth Age" complete with novels and a new role-playing system. Ug.)
The Six Messiahs
by Mark Frost
Not nearly as fun and intelligent as the first novel, The List of Seven, but a passable sequel. The
continued adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle solving yet another magical mystery while tromping around
1920 United States. I couldn't tell if it was a mystical novel trying to be serious or a serious novel trying
to be mystical. The ending of the book was the only really exciting part.
Where the Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak
This brilliantly crafted story kept me riveted for hours on end. I liked the art too.
Crown of Swords
by Robert Jordan
In the seventh installment of the Wheel of Time I have to admit that not much of significance
happened. It took Jordan six extra months to write this one and the final product was a good 200 pages
shorter than previous novels in the series. You could tell Jordan wasn't quite sure what to do with most of
the story as he ignored his normal style of intricately describing every detail and replaced it with
summarizations of the main events. Not nearly as exciting as any of the previous novels.
Bad as I Wanna Be
by Dennis Rodman
First I have to say that I didn't read this book cover to cover. I ended up desperately searching at random places for something interesting. This can be interpreted two ways: 1.) I didn't give the book a chance...or 2.) The book is so bad I couldn't bear to force my way through it. Bad as I Wanna Be is written for illiterates. The entire text size is large enough to classify it as a Large Print book (you know, for people with bad eyesight?) and if that weren't enough every page has several sections that are even larger. If he used a reasonable size the book would be so thin people would think it wasn't worth it. Well it's not worth it; it is crap.
Watership Down
by Richard Adams
This tale of a bunch of rabbits that leave their warren due to the prophecies of one of their numbers is
not half as exciting as the movie based on the novel. The first 300 pages were just a rather uninteresting
series of little adventures: they have to cross a stream, there's a dog chasing them, they're stuck out in the
open. Only in the last hundred or so pages did the story begin to get interesting as the story began to flow
together. But the animated movie was really great.
The World According to Garp
by John Irving
This book about the life of T.S. Garp was absolutely wonderful. Irving began writing in a kind of
summarizing fashion that was enjoyable to read but I didn't think he could keep up for long. Yet
somehow he did, recounting the events in Garp's life that led him to be a writer and drove him to write the
things he did in the comfortable way of a master story teller. As an added surprise he even includes
Garp's stories! A rare book filled with unique people. Highly recommended.
Smila's Sense of Snow
by Peter Hoeg
The first thing to say about this book is that the critics were wrong. I was led to believe that this
would be the best book of the year. It turned out to be filled with too much philosophy on life and way
way too many mathematical equations (I'm serious, it had paragraphs of mathematical equations). I was
hoping for more of a relationship between Smila and Isaiah, since his death was the launching of her
investigation. Unfortunately on page one he's dead, and wading through 400 pages of poetic prose isn't
my idea of a thrilling mystery and although I do enjoy well written novels; fiction is not poetry. The
ending was interesting but deserved a better book.
Assassin's Apprentice
by Robin Hobb
Written in the form of the recollections of an aging royal assassin, this first novel is brilliant. The
story begins with the earliest memories of Fitz, the rejected bastard prince of the Six Duchies. Raised in
the stables and in the shadows of court society, young Fitz is picked out by the king to become the
apprentice to the court assassin, Chade. Hobbs' unique style of writing follows Fitz as he learns his
profession and his place in Buckkeep. Smooth, easy reading makes this a highly enjoyable novel.
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