Once Upon a Bookshelf

Siblings Tony and Tia have always known that they weren’t normal human beings, even though neither could remember where exactly they came from. They’ve always had to hide their “special powers” – they can communicate telepathically, Tony can manipulate things with telekinesis, and Tia can unlock doors and communicate with animals.

When their guardian suddenly dies, Tony and Tia are shipped off to an orphanage, where they meet a man who claims to be their uncle and have legal guardianship over them. Both kids know that not only is this man not related to them in any way, but also that he only wants to harm them. In order to avoid this and in order to discover exactly who they are, they escape from the orphanage one night and begin a dangerous journey to Witch Mountain, following clues that Tia had just discovered that their real uncle left them.

I vaguely remember watching and enjoying the Escape to Witch Mountain movies when I was a kid; hearing that Disney was going to make a third remake of the adaptation of the book spurned me on to mooch and read this book. It was a cute book, though at times it seemed a little too convenient how Tia and Tony would suddenly remember something about themselves at the exact right point in time to help them out of a bad situation. I suppose, however, that for the age group this was written for, that it was the best way to go about learning about the kids and where they came from.

The novel starts with Tony and Tia only knowing that they aren’t like anyone else on earth and that they probably come from another world:

For a moment, as he stood there, he wondered again about the world they had come from, and if they would ever find it. In what direction it lay, or how one got there, he hadn’t the slightest idea.

“Maybe,” Tia had once said, “all we have to do is climb a certain stairway, or go around a strange corner – and there it’ll be.”

“Just like that,” he’d said, laughing.

“Why not?” she’d insisted. “We know the kind of place it is. It’s full of magic and music – for that’s the only kind of place we could have come from. So why wouldn’t we have to find it sort of magically?”

Maybe it didn’t exactly make sense, the way Tia had put it, but he was sure of one thing. Considering how unlike other people they were, it was the only kind of world they could have come from – so it must be somewhere.

By the end of the novel, they have remembered their journey from Hungary to America when the spaceship that took them to earth in the first place crashed, why they were trying to get to America and what happened to the planet they came from, and people who helped and trying to hurt them when they first came to earth. So it just came across as slightly too convenient.

That said, however, it was a fun book. Cute, and definitely something I would’ve loved reading when I was quite a bit younger.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the first book in a series of the same name by Douglas Adams. Our hero, Arthur, wakes up one Thursday morning to discover that his home (both his house and his planet) is about to be distroyed in order to create an expressway. We discover that Arthur’s friend Ford is actually an alien who manages to hitch a ride for himself and Arthur on the ship of the aliens that are blowing up the planet.

It’s about time that I finally got around to reading this book; I’ve only been meaning to read it for years now. It certainly wasn’t what I expected, even having seen the movie. I don’t think I expected it to be so funny and yet so … random. Yes, random would be a good way to describe it. There were times I had a harder time following the progression from one point of the story to another. But it was enjoyable, and like I said, quite funny.

The only real “problem” (and I use that term loosely) I had with seeing this movie before reading the book, is that every time I read what Marvin says, all I can hear is Alan Rickman’s voice in my head. Not that that’s a horribly bad thing, it’s just awfully distracting at times. I’m not sure whether it’s because of Alan Rickman’s voice or not, but Marvin quickly became my favourite character in the book.

It’s refreshing to read a scifi book that has a humorous way of looking at life in outer-space. Most of it is so serious, and sometimes disturbing, even if this does bring up a few points that makes you wonder. You know, why are we here, and are we really just the product of a computer program? ;)

I have this one friend who, for as long as I’ve known her, can somehow manage to bring Cthulhu into a conversation about anything. Needless to say, I was intrigued. I knew that Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos had a huge cult following, but had never really looked into it.

This book is a collection of short stories, and while I normally have a very hard time with these types of books (unless they are by an author I love or all take place in a fictional universe that I’m very familiar with), I decided to give this one a try. It features stories by H.P. Lovecraft and other authors writing about the Cthulhu Mythos.

I started out this book loving it. Was really excited for it and devoured the first few stories. A quarter of the way into the book I was having problems. Half way through the book, I could not go on. No matter how much I want to, I just can’t get past that point. I think I’ve had too much of evil aliens/other evil beings to last me for a couple of months now.

Not to say that the stories I read weren’t good; I’ve simply got to read me some more Lovecraft – just not for a long while now. While I love scifi, I’m not normally big into these types of stories where there are so many evil beings or occultish stuff, and I think I over did it a little bit.

I first stumbled across Bova’s books when I was a wee high school student. His were the first sci-fi books I had ever read, have been hooked on the genre ever since, and always seem to find myself going back to read more of his works that I haven’t yet. What keeps drawing me back is that although it is science fiction, it is so close to reality, and there’s no trouble at all believing that what he has written is quite possibly going to come true in a couple of years time.

This particular book is about a television show, and the people who are creating the show.

Titanic, a large television company, is in financial difficulties, and has managed to end up with only one of their shows being renewed for the coming season. In order to get things back in order, they’ve found a few investors to help out with one special television show, which showcases the best 3D technology developed so far.

The story centres around those who are putting the show together - the inventor of the 3D software, a rep from Titanic, and the screen writer. When you find that everything that possibly could go wrong does, you can’t help but cheering on those three characters. And, unsurprisingly, they also seem like the only uncorrupt people in showbusiness.

Surprisingly, for Bova, I found this book to be rather anti-climatic at the end, and in all honesty, was somewhat disappointed. It felt like the book just ended with everything that the characters had been striving for falling through.

The Prestige is a science fiction book written by Christopher Priest. Apparantely, he’s very well known, but I’ve never read any of his books before. And okay, I admit it. The only reason I had heard of this book, and the only reason I even really wanted to read this book, was because I heard that Hugh Jackman was in talks to be in the movie adaptation. The story is about two stage magicians who have a feud going on between them that ends up travelling down through the generations - each generation tries to heal the gap, but all have failed until the present.

The way this book was written really impressed me. It was seperated into five different parts, and there are four different narrators, and each different part has such a different voice that you wouldn’t even realize they were all really written by the same author. In one part, the narration reminded me slightly of an old black and white detective movie, whereas another sounded slightly like a text-book.

I normally don’t like fiction that’s written in first person. I think perhaps that may be due to the fact that I’ve read too much bad fanfiction in first person where you just KNOW that the author in Mary-Sueing him or herself into the story. With that said, I actually liked the fact that this was in first person; it felt more like a conversation between you and the narrator.

Now, you have expect that the narrator is going to completely make events sound like he/she was the victim. I think that is what made it so interesting to have a number of different narrators telling about the same events. While going through the fourth part of the novel, for example, I had to go back to the second and re-read it to see exactly what was different about the situation in both persons perspectives. Those who you first believe to be the bad guys aren’t, and no one is quite as innocent or good as you first believe them to be.

As well, this book seriously reminded me of the classic gothic novels - Mary Shelley’s Frankenstien, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde - even while you were totally repulsed by what was going on, you still felt this great pity for the character who is the so-called monster.

I have to say, I’m really excited to see how they turn this book into a movie. Normally, I can say which parts of a book I think should not under any circumstance be cut out (not that what I think is usually what those making the movie think as well), but this time I have absolutely no idea.