January 4 - 10

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
I picked this book up over the summer at a used bookstore because I was intrigued after reading the first few pages. I never got a chance to read it because I headed back up to school shortly after, and decided I would save it for this winter break. Well I finally started it, and ohmygoodness! I'm quite interested in the world. It's a very disorienting combination of old-world-ish-ness (so many hyphens!) and references to clubbing and booty shorts and whatnot. It's a mashup like no other, and I love the way the author weaves them together. The language is fantastic as well. There have been so many sentences that I just paused and re-read for the sheer joy of it. When that happens once in a book, I'm pleased. In this book, it's already happened several times, and I'm not even halfway through. I am pretty pleased.

The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card
I decided to give a bit more of my time to Orson Scott Card after I really enjoyed his novel The Lost Gate. I have a feeling part of that is because I listened to The Lost Gate as well as this one in audiobook, and both were read by this man with a purely magical voice, Stefan something.... I was so pleased to hear his voice start up the opening of this book! I was even more pleased as the words he read were holding up to my understanding of Card's quality. Humans have left Earth after we (inevitably) destroyed it, and set in place a machine called the Oversoul to prevent humans from destroying their new world, aptly named Harmony. This works out for some odd 40 million years, but the Oversoul wasn't supposed to have to last so long, and starts losing its power to subtly redirect humans' thoughts when they turn towards potentially disastrous things (such as war). The narration begins with the point of view of one character for a while, and slowly begins adding in sections of other characters, which keeps it really interesting. There's lots of political intrigue and mystery, which was so well done that it kept me wanting to read (hear) more. I actually listened to the whole book in a week, which surprised me, I'll be moving on the second one as soon as I can!