Humor & Sci-Fi

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thougths on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron. This from the gal who gave us You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia. It's what one would expect from Nora, whom I hope doesn't mind that I call her by her first name . But I figure since she's bared intimate thoughts in this book like neck shame, "maintenance" and aging I know her pretty well. And she's funny. She takes the familiar, mundane, and boring and laughs at them. You'll laugh too. She has a very poignant chapter on death, which reveals life's common denominator. Even though I have little in common other than an aging neck, we've both been touched profoundly by the lives of those we've loved and the pain of loss as some of those loved ones have died. A fun and delightful read.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. O.k., I've admitted my summer brainmush fest with SG Atlantis and this book is definilty an influencer in the series. As far as Sci-Fi goes it was intriguing. Ender's training kinda, vaguely, goes along with my sidebar post about creating genius. I liked Ender. I liked the characters, I liked the conflict, though I hated the name Buggers.


What I found really intriguing (but that's probably just cause I've got a hammer so I see nails everywhere) was the focus and intensity of education, brainwashing if you will, that Ender and his commrades undergo. There is a point in the story where Ender simply accepts the inevitable, that he is the hope of the future, and so he must perform that for which he is called and prepared. Of course I believe that Jesus is the one and only Hope, but I do think there are some lessons here for us as students and as educators.
I found the denouement hard to believe. I mean, I believed it to a point, and then just didn't. I'm not big into SF but it was a fun read and according to TWTM dystopian junkies, a must read. I liked The Hunger Games better.