The Giver, by Lois Lowry

This book sucks. My son had to read it in his 6th grade class and since he was confused by the dystopian universe of the book, I decided to read it along with him. I have nothing against dystopian novels--Atlas Shrugged and 1984 are two of my favorite books. But it should at least make sense. In The Giver, they all live in a commune worse than anything dreamed up in Soviet Russia or Communist China where the leaders kill babies if they don't develop quickly enough. Apparently there was a big war and to prevent such a thing from happening again, they all decided to live in this new commune where everyone is the same. But, for some reason, the author also decided to mutate humans to some new species which can no longer see color and who can transfer memories by rubbing another person's back (this person is the Giver). Only one person is allowed to know history or have memories of anything outside the commune and this person must pass the information along to a new giver every few generations.

What are we supposed to learn from this ridiculous premise? The commune has nothing to do with life or reality for actual humans, so why are we contemplating these characters? Why not write a story about a group of people living in a commune after a war but without all the silly memory-transfer parts? Having a brave child rebel against the commune would be interesting, although I'm still not sure it would be useful for 6th graders to read.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the novel is that it is not clear that the author believes the commune is a living horror. One gets the impression that the author believes the commune is almost a good idea except, perhaps, for the killing of babies and the inability to see colors and hear music. The book is infused with a strong sense of duty with everyone simply doing what they are supposed to. And the main character doesn't rebel for his own freedom and happiness but instead escapes the commune to prevent a baby from being executed that he has come to love.

The only good thing about this book is that my son and I could laugh at some of the wooden dialogue which the characters are forced to utter by their leaders, such as, "I apologize for inconveniencing my learning community," said by a student to the class for being late. The Giver is a lousy book.

Afraid, by Jack Kilborn

This book was written by J. A. Konrath who wrote Origin and The List which I really enjoyed. Konrath published Afraid under the Kilborn pen-name because it is in the horror genre instead of the thriller one. Unfortunately, I was put off by the gratuitous gore, torture and evil in Afraid, and I didn't like it. The story was fairly interesting: a group of government-created super-human soldiers is dropped into a small Wisconsin town to hunt down a man, and they leave chaos and death in the wake of their search. But every twenty pages or so the story would turn to excessive violence with detailed descriptions and it was hard to get through these passages.

I think I'll just stick to the Konrath thrillers from now on.

Ender's Game, by Orsen Scott Card

This is the second time I read this book because my son is reading it in school.  I probably enjoyed it more the second time than the first, but missed the surprise ending from the first time around.  The first time I was put off by the strange world of the future where people had lost their freedom and the world was run by the military.  The second time through, I understood more about the bugger threat so I wasn't as put off.

Overall, the book could have been more tightly plotted.  The brother and sister of Ender writing their political views was more of a distraction and only contributed to the end of the book and not to the main plot of Ender's journey.

My son's review (age 11) was:  Not the best book, but OK.  I can't argue with that.

The Shining, by Stephen King

I normally don't like horror books, but I'm such a big fan of Stephen King's writing that I decided to give The Shining a shot, and I wasn't disappointed. Once again, the strongest part of this King novel was the characterization, letting us inside the heads of the father, mother and son staying at the hotel and the caretaker who also has the shining.

I had seen the movie with Jack Nicholson many years ago and it was impossible not to picture the actors in the movie while I read the book. For most of the characters, it wasn't too distracting, but the character of the wife, Wendy, was so different that it was a distraction. The character in the book was much stronger and it's a shame the movie changed it.

I'm still not sure how King makes us want to keep reading. There were long stretches where we were inside the father's head when he's thinking horrible thoughts and generally going crazy, but it's compelling. Maybe it's the sheer nakedness of seeing what the character is thinking, even as he lies to himself and then battles with himself to uncover the lies.

Replay, by Ken Grimwood

Replay is a great book--probably the best book I've read this year. I found it by creating a program in java that analyzes book ratings from amazon.com. Basically, I loaded all my book reviews to amazon.com and then downloaded all the other reviews for all the books I'd read.  Then I looked for users who had read the same books as me and that had similar ratings. Once I found that list of people, I looked to see which other books they liked but that I hadn't yet read. One of the top books from this search was Replay, and I was not disappointed! (Another book in the top 5 was Pillars of the Earth which, so far, I'm not enjoying as much.)

Replay tells the story of Jeff Winston who dies at 43 and is reborn as himself in college. He goes through that life up until 43 and then he dies again, and again, and again. You might think that it would get tedious living the same life over and over again, but Grimwood does a masterful job of always keeping it interesting by having Winston continue to learn and grow throughout the novel.

One of the fascinating things about Replay is that it touches on many different subjects throughout the series of lives that Winston chooses for himself:  greed, hedonism, love, family, career and art, to name a few. With such an open-ended premise executed so well, I was worried that the ending would fall flat. However, Grimwood pulled off the perfect ending which made me laugh out loud in delight. I highly recommend this book.