Rainbows End

Rainbows End / Vernor Vinge. — 1st ed. — New York : Tor, 2006.

364 p. ; 25 cm.

ISBN: 9780312856847

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

1. Alzheimer's disease—Fiction. 2. Libraries – Fiction. 3. San Diego – Fiction. 4. Science fiction. 5. Spy stories. 6. Virtual reality—Fiction.

813.54

Step a few decades forward in the 21^st century and view a world on the brink of dystopia or destruction. The intelligence services of Europe, Japan and India make a horrifying discovery, someone has successfully developed weapon for mind control that can be broadcast electronically. They soon know, or seriously suspect the source for the weapon is a huge biotech complex in San Diego, California. What they don’t know is that one of their own is the man who plans to enforce peace on the world using the weapon.

Meanwhile in San Diego, aged poet Robert Gu gets the latest treatment for Alzheimer's and his failed eyesight. As a poet he wrote great works of art, as a person he’s obnoxious and insulting. Having him once again conscious of his surroundings and able to interact with others is a source of mixed emotions for his family. There’s a lot he doesn’t like about this new world to which he’s been awakened. The automobiles all drive themselves, computers are built into your clothes, and most people walk about in a cross between California and their personal choice of virtual reality. But most of all he misses books printed on paper. He goes over to the University of California at San Diego to visit the library. He discovers that all the paper books are about to be digitized and shredded. But when he joins the protest movement against the book destruction, he unwittingly crosses paths with the foreign intelligence services and the rogue agent they’ve hired to be the cutout man.

This near-future thriller keeps the pace moving as the reader tries to find out what’s real and what isn’t, what’s going on, and will the author need to call in the Marines to save the world before it’s all over? It also throws up a lot of ideas about the interaction between technology and society, ideas that are both morally and politically stimulating. Rainbows End is the winner of the 2007 Hugo Award for best novel.

The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby

The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby : the first graphic novel by George Beard and Harold Hutchins / [Dav Pinkley].— New York : Scholastic, 2002.

125 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

(Captain Underpants)

ISBN: 0-439-37606-8

1. Infants Comic books, strips, etc. 2. Superhero Comic books, strips, etc.

741.5973

The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby is a book overflowing with potty humor befitting the sensibilities of its supposedly nine-and-a-half and ten-year-old authors and its real target audience. It’s also laugh out loud fun for those of us who can measure our age in multiples of decades – if you’re not offended by the potty humor. If you are, the penultimate page has an offer to send the publisher a self-addressed stamped envelope, “And We’LL send you more offensive stuff.” The Flip-O-Rama animation pages delightfully fulfill the cover’s promise of “Action” and “Laffs.” All in all this a delightfully silly book.

However, the reader should be aware that there are other judgments on this title. According to Pam Santi, the Riverside, California grandmother whose request to ban the book was rejected by Riverside Unified School District in 2003, “There’s just no moral value to that poop character.”

David Copperfield

David Copperfield / by Charles Dickens; read by Frederick Davidson.— Ashland : Blackstone Audiobooks, 2004.

Downloadable audio file (36 hrs., 17 min.)

ISBN: 0786131063

Title from: Title details screen.

Requires OverDrive Media Console (file size: 521563 KB).

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

1. Autobiographical fiction. 2. Bildungsromans. 3. England – Fiction. 4. Young men – Fiction.

In this semi-autobiographical novel, a successful writer reminisces about his early life and education. What starts as episodic memories soon becomes a vast witty narrative delight of over eight hundred pages with multiple intertwining plots and over thirty distinctly memorable characters from every level of nineteenth century English society. The false humility of the repulsive Uriah Heep and the grandiloquent optimism of the ever impoverished Wilkins Micawber, a character Dickens based on his own father, have become characters that have grown to be cultural touchstones beyond the novel.

Frederick Davidson narration is somewhat dry and detached, but his voicing of characters is brilliant. The whining unctuousness he brings to the voice of Uriah Heep made my skin crawl. His curt way of giving voice to Betsy Trotwood produced an instant mental picture of David’s eccentric and opinionated aunt. The gruff magnanimity of Daniel Peggotty and the self-righteous cruelty of Edward Murdstone and his sister are wonderfully voiced.

Exit wounds

Exit wounds / Rutu Modan.— Montréal : Drawn & Quarterly, 2007.

172 p. : col. ill. ; 24 cm.

ISBN: 1897299060

Text in English

1. Adult children of dysfunctional families – Comic books, strips, etc. 2. Fathers and sons – Comic books, strips, etc. 3. Graphic novels. 4. Israel – Comic books, strips, etc. 5. Separation (Psychology) – Comic books, strips, etc. 6. Suicide bombings – Israel – Comic books, strips, etc. 7. Taxicab drivers – Comic books, strips, etc.

741.595694

Tel Aviv cab driver Koby Franco receives a call from an Israeli soldier. She’s not looking for a ride. She wants him to take a blood test to determine if an unidentified victim of a suicide bombing is his father. Since he is estranged from his father, who he hasn’t spoken with in two years, Koby is at first repelled, but becomes intrigued when the tall young soldier reveals that she was his father’s girlfriend.

This subtly crafted graphic novel explores themes of deception and abandonment as it reveals the identity of the bomb victim. It’s a mystery for those who enjoyed Graham Greene's The third man or Dashiell Hammett's The thin man.

Laika

Laika / by Nick Abadzis ; color by Hilary Sycamore.— New York : First Second,2007.

205p. : col. Ill, ; 22 cm.

ISBN: 978-1-569643-101-0

1. Animal experimentation – Comic books, strips, etc. 2. Dogs – Comic books, strips, etc. 3. Edícia Sputnik – Comic books, strips, etc. 4. Graphic novels. 5. Historical fiction. 6. Laika (dog) – Comic books, strips, etc. 7. Russia – History – 20th century – Comic books, strips, etc. 8.Space race – Comic books, strips, etc.

741.5942

A dog story set in the early days of the cold war space race, ending sadly, as many dog stories do with the demise of the main character and the grief of his human companions. Pressured for another spectacular launch to add to the propaganda success of Sputnik I, soviet scientists launch a dog into orbit with no plan for her return.

In this well researched piece of historical fiction author and illustrator Abadzis adds an imagined early life for the dog Laika. This deepens the emotional impact of his graphic novel and forces the reader to consider the ethics of such animal experimentation.

The fabric of the cosmos

The fabric of the cosmos : space, time, and the texture of reality / Brian Greene.— New York : A.A. Knopf, 2004.

xii, 569 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

ISBN: 0375412883

Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [543]-544) and index.

1. Cosmology. 2. Space. 3. Time.

523.1

Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and a superstring theorist explains the stuff of reality. By skillful use of diagrams and analogies he succeeds even for non-mathematicians like me. He also goes on to explain of what the world might be made. In other words, what science knows by experimental proof and what has yet to be proved by experiment. And most puzzling is the experimental fact that the rules of movement for the big things in the universe, people, planets, stars and galaxies are quite different from the laws of the very small things in the universe, atoms and sub-atomic particles, which follow the rules of quantum mechanics.

Humans experience three dimensions of space and one of time, and while we can go up or down, forward or backwards, left or right in space we can only travel forward in time. But are these dimensions the real stuff of the universe as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein insisted or just a linguistic expressions of relationships as Gottfried von Leibniz argued? Following time’s single direction Greene leads the reader back to the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang and then forward to a cosmos that may have as many as eleven dimensions. It’s quite a trip.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein / Mary Shelley ; read by Tom Casaletto.— Library ed.— [Grand Haven] : Brilliance Audio, c2004.

Downloadable audio file (8 hrs., 23 min.)

(Classic collection)

Title from: Title details screen.

Unabridged.

Requires OverDrive Media Console (file size: 120584 KB).

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

1. Frankenstein (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2. Gothic fiction (Literary genre). 3. Monsters – Fiction. 4. Romanticism. 5. Scientists – Fiction.

823.7

It could be called a Tale of Two Wretches for wretch is the term that Victor Frankenstein and his Creature most frequently use to describe themselves or each other. Applied to oneself, it’s a term of pathetic sorrow and isolation, but when aimed at the other, it’s a term of abuse and scorn. Full of romantic Sturm und Drang and wild inspiring landscapes as the characters trek across Europe into the Arctic, this Gothic revival tale and classic of horror fiction has very few scares in it, but it overflows with tortured reflections on the human condition in general and the isolation of the outcast in particular.