This is a great compendium of short essays on people, famous and otherwise, about their personal philosophies. Some left no impression, and some inspired me to save excerpts; some were too foreign for me to identify with, and others felt like words from a kindred spirit. Overall, maybe the most valuable benefit of this book is gaining a sense of the diversity of views, approaches, and what different people value. I’m sure it has also inspired many readers to tackle their own This I Believe essay!

This book does a marvelous job of picking up where “The Sparrow” left off, filling in details that both extend, and explain, the story. One of the best ironic themes has got to be that, despite the heavy emphasis on the linguistics and communication needed for contact between alien cultures, much of the disastrous outcomes of their contact came down to, well, miscommunications. The sequel provides closure that the first book held off on delivering, and as a result it is both more emotionally satisfying and also easier, in the end, to put down when you’re done. Still, the ideas will linger long after the book has been closed.

Actually, I’m co-editing this book, not quite “consuming” it. With luck, it will be out in late 2008 or early 2009!

This wonderful book is a collection of letters written by a 49-year-old British woman who was the first foreigner to visit, and document, much of rural Japan in the late 1870’s. Told to leave England and travel to “improve her health”, she used this excuse to have adventures all over, in the Rocky Mountains, Hawaii, Tibet, Morocco, and many other places, including (the subject of this book) Japan. She bravely and deliberately tackled the least known, obscure, badly repaired “unbeaten tracks” to quench her thirst for exploration and knowledge. She didn’t even speak Japanese in the beginning, and so worked through a guide/interpreter she hired in Tokyo. Her descriptions of the land she traveled through, the hardships of her trip, and how rural Japanese lived make for fascinating reading. She also spent several months on the northern island of Hokkaido, visiting and interviewing the Aino, an indigenous people unrelated to the Japanese (she notes that they have European, not Asian, facial features, which is interesting). I hope that when I reach her age, I can retain just as much adventurous spirit as she did.

I enjoyed this book, although after the first few chapters I found it to be slower going. However, Natalie writes with an honesty that is compelling, capturing both ups and downs, successes and limitations, and yet the overall sense of how writing has become the core of her life, the one thing she is 100% committed to. It’s uplifting to see that commitment.

I also took away several useful bits of advice about writing—both how to structure time to achieve writing and how to write past self-consciousness to the “good stuff”.

This book is sort of funny… but I just lost interest. Not funny enough, perhaps!

I’ll generally give a book 50 pages to get me hooked—if I’m feeling generous, maybe even 100 pages. But if it fails the 100-page test, then it’s really not worth going on. This book falls into that category.

The book opens with a barrage of names, words, places, and religions that comes off as more bewildering than immersive. The main characters are unsympathetic, and after a while I found it impossible to really care what happened to them. Some intrigue had begun to develop by about page 75, but it just wasn’t enough. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, or for people I could care about to manifest. Possibly if one were to push through another 100 pages, this might happen—but I can’t summon the motivation. So, back it goes to the library.

Six people are sent to Mars, in the wake of two failed missions. On landing, they learn that their return vehicle has also failed, and they are stranded. Their only hope is to trek across thousands of kilometers to a return vehicle unused by one of the previous missions—and that ship can only hold two people.

The story is told in shifting episodes, from person to person, weaving their individual memories in with their shared present. A mixture of adventure, survival, and whodunit, it’s well paced and gripping. And in the end, if not everyone can return, what do you do? The question stayed with me long after I’d put the book down.

If you liked the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you’ll probably have a great time with this book. The world in which these pirates sail mixes our history with a bit of magic, and rum and wonders abound. There are battles and ghosts and incantations and blood and powerful dreams—and naturally, our hero must chase after the bad guy to save one Elizabeth from certain doom. It is by turns creepy and nail-biting and laughable: great fun!

In the far distant future of Earth, a man with alien eyes and no memory appears and must cross North America to search for his name and his past. Le Guin tells an engaging story that weaves its way from truth to illusion and back to truth again—but in the end, the truth isn’t necessarily cut and dried. The best books leave you with something to wonder and think about, as this one does. Great story.