The City and the Stars

This is Arthur C Clarke's rewrite of his first sci fi novel, Against the Fall of Night. I have reviewed the first version separately.

The two versions are similar in major aspects, but differ in many details. The second version seems more "realistic", but some of its characters seem less well developed in some ways. I liked the first version a bit better.

My review of the first version gives a summary that should also suffice for the second, so I will not say more here on that.

I'd probably recommend reading both versions and have readers decide for themselves which is better.

Against the Fall of Night and Sequel

There are two books in one here. The first is Arthur C Clarke's first sci fi novel, Against the Fall of Night. The second is a sequel written with Clarke's permission by another author titled, Beyond the Fall of Night. I liked the first, but really didn't care for the second.

Set in the very far future on Earth, the first book is a tale of two, very different human civilizations which have been separated for many, many years. One is super technological with very long living people. The other is more the back to nature type with people with much shorter life spans.

A young man from the super tech group rediscovers the other group and goes on an adventure with a friend he meets among the other group. He learns the real truth about Earth's history and the split of humanity. Quite a surprise.

It's a good story, though some aspects seem a bit of a stretch. It was written a long time ago.

The sequel is just weird. I was barely able to force myself to finish it.

Interestingly, Clarke rewrote the first book and published it as The City and the Stars. I reviewed it separately. I liked both versions, but I liked the first a bit more than the second. See what you think.

Every Frenchman Has One

A star in many great movies of the last century, Olivia de Havilland wrote this book about her first years living in France. It was originally published in the early 1960's. She is still living there and is now 102 years old; the book was republished in honor of her 100th birthday complete with an interview with her.

Overall, I did enjoy the book. Some chapters were really hilarious. Some were a bit hard on the French, but some expressed possibly well deserved criticism. A few will probably give the politically correct a fit. But, I think all were pretty much factually correct.

Times have changed, so let this book take you back and make you laugh/smile, sigh and/or maybe cringe.

Spoiler Alert:

The title refers to the French obsession with the liver - probably not what you thought, right? :)

The Essential Charles Fillmore

I bought this book several years ago, but I never seemed to get to it. Then one day, I just decided to start it.

It went fairly well at first, but then it slowed down for me. Honestly, this may have been due more to distractions in my life than anything in the book - though I will say that the writing style dates from the time much of the book was actually written which can be a bit tough for people these days. Things did speed up closer to the end. It took me a year to get through it. That's pretty slow for me. Hopefully, it goes faster for you. It was worth the effort I think - there is much to ponder here.

The book covers the essentials in the philosophy of Charles Fillmore of the Unity movement - for the most part, in his own words from old articles he wrote - organized by major topic. Commentary is provided by James Gaither who is associated with the Unity School.

It would be quite difficult to summarize this book, and I'm not going to attempt that here. Basically though, it gives readers insight into the Unity movement which is a metaphysical Christian philosophical movement. Unity has groups all over, in addition to a central headquarters. I guess it could be called a Christian demonination, but maybe a less conventional one. Their website is useful in many respects, by the way.

Reading this book gives readers a lot to consider and that could take some time. It gave me some useful insight and pointed me to topics I'd like to explore further in other Unity publications. I was a little disappointed in lack of detail in some portions of the book, but hopefully I'll find this in these other publications.

As I said, this book isn't the easiest to read and may take a lot of time to get through, but I do consider it worth the effort. If you decide to give it a try, I hope you find it helpful.

Mindset Warrior Summary Guide for Peterson's 12 Rules for Life

I thought that reading the summary would save time and hopefully deliver the same overall benefit as reading the actual book. This did not work as planned from what I can see.

First, the formatting, grammar etc left a lot to be desired making it a slow read. Second, the summary left me confused rather than enlightened versus the book - I did thumb through a copy of the book in a store, so I had some idea of what I should see in a summary. 

Buy the book or a better summary and read that rather than this.

Prince Lestat by Anne Rice

This is the 13th book of the Vampire Chronicles. A lot of time went by between the publication of this one and the previous installment. I thought Ms. Rice had moved on to other things, but one day I saw a copy of #13 on a foray through Walmart - that's a whole other story. :)

I have liked the Vampire Chronicles overall, but a few installments were better and some worse than others. The current one was a bit below average - I'm just being honest.

The book just had too many characters and not all their stories were connected all that well. The overarching story was OK, I guess. The dialogue/wording got a little repetitive - for example, the term "blood drinker" got a little irritating to read that many times. Some of my favorite characters played too small roles. I personally did not like how Lestat's ward and her boyfriend were "treated" towards the end.

I think the book would have been much better if it had been shortened by say 100 pages. Focus on fewer characters would have helped too - though more on Louis and a few other old favorites would have been nice. Maybe it had just been a long time since the last installment, and Ms. Rice will hit her stride once again in #14 which has now been published.

There are two appendices in the book. Take a look. They are very helpful in keeping track of all the characters and back stories.

For loyal fans, reading #13 is required, but it may be bit disappointing. Hoping #14 is better.

The Marching Morons by Kornbluth

See my review of Search the Sky by the same author (along with Pohl) for background and context.

What happens when the less intelligent out breed the intelligent? This book examines this question.

Is the author correct? Are we headed this way? See what you think.

Please note that this book is very short - only about 40 pages or so.

The Songs of Distant Earth by A.C. Clarke

I was first attracted to this book by the title. It is very catchy I think, and after reading the book I think it was a good choice in many ways.

This novel considers many interesting problems in humans expanding beyond Earth. Given the vast distances involved and relativity - we are not assuming warp drive a la Star Trek in this book - communication is far from instant and travel times are much longer than average human life spans. Just think of the many implications there - and this book does consider several of them. One important one - each group of colonists is on its own, in most, if not quite all respects.

The story in this book follows a stop over by a group of colonists who left Earth in its last days on a world colonized many years before. Both groups are human, but in many ways they are alien to each other.

An interesting subplot deals with some lobster like creatures native to the planet the story is set on. Are they intelligent? Who does this world belong to anyway?

The stop over group faces great dangers in continuing to its planned destination. Wouldn't it be better for them to stay put? This and other questions will be answered for those who read the book. :)

I give this book 4, and not 5, out of 5 stars, mainly because I had a little trouble identifying with the characters. Maybe it was just me.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

In this book, we are returned to the world of Harry Potter many years after the last novel. Potter and his friends are now grown up and even running things in some cases. The characters are faced with a new, yet familiar problem - I won't spoil it by giving details here.

The book was OK, but I was a little disappointed. I had hoped for more, especially given how long it had been since the last Harry Potter novel.

Maybe it was the play format instead of the novel format that I was used to for a Potter story. Seemed like something was missing making it hard to visualize the story in my head. If watching a play, the actors supply this missing element I guess.

In any case, the story just seemed to plod along. The characters seemed rather flat. The story itself seemed a little shallow. It was nice to see some favorite characters again, at least in some form.

One thing I noted was how much blank paper there was in this book. Seems they could have been a little less wasteful in formatting.