What's On Your Nightstand #1 (Oct '11)

The books I'm reading right now are "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli and "Mars Crossing" by Geoffrey A. Landis. The first one is a book I bought some time ago, but never really finished, and the second one is from a library.

After I finish both books I plan to read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. I've only read some quotes, but it seems to be very interesting. 


I've recently finished reading two books for a read-a-thon. The review of one ("The Stealers of Dreams" by Steve Lyons) is already posted and I hope to finish writing the review of the other one ("Winner Takes All" by Jacqueline Rayner) this week.


Sadly I don't have much time to read and mostly read on the bus, but I try to read at least two books every month.

Review - Doctor Who: Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner

Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner

The Doctor and Rose land on Earth to visit Rose’s mother. What they find is a new video game, “Death to Mantodeans”, that is not as harmless and innocent as it looks like. This video game is a prize to be given to people who find a message in a card.

Winning in the video game is almost impossible. In fact, very few people have finished the training levels and only the Doctor can get a very high score.

There are other prizes people can win that are a bit more suspicious: mysterious trips. The people who go on those trips cannot be reached by any means and they are not returning from the trip; they seem to have disappeared. The truth is scarier: they have become part of the video games.

Like the other Doctor Who book I’ve reviewed, it can be enjoyed by fans of the tv series and by people who have never watched an episode. But to understand everything, like why the Doctor is a bit scared of Rose’s mother, it is necessary to have watched a few episodes. That knowledge is also useful to know the characters as their description is not very detailed.

The Quevvils, the bad aliens of this novel, seem to be ridiculous and harmless, but the truth is quite different. They shouldn’t be underestimated just because they look a bit silly; when they attack they are rather powerful.

This book shows that winning is relative. Obviously the Doctor saves the day, like he always does, but he can’t save everybody. He stops the threat and saves the Earth, but not everybody lives.

Another topics present in this novel are slavery and trust. The people in the video game can’t perform any movements themselves; they are controlled by players with gaming pads. They don’t know what is happening to them (neither the people inside the video game, nor the players), but Rose does, and she starts to wonder how much she really trusts the Doctor when she’s inside the game and the Doctor is controlling her. We see how difficult it is to trust another person when you are not in control of any part of a situation.

Review - Doctor Who: The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons

The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons

The Doctor, Rose and Jack, three time travellers, land once again on a foreign planet that’s inhabited by humans. What they find is not what they expected: The planet is supposed to be very advanced, but they see that there is a big lack of development instead. Another thing they notice is the absence of fiction. On tv, there are only programs that show facts and the people of that planet have a strong negative reaction to lies.

Later, they learn that any kind of fiction is forbidden (lies, books, tv series, dreams...) and that people who are caught indulging in fiction end up it the Big White House, some kind of asylum for who they believe to be mentally ill.

The big problems start when the Doctor, Rose and Jack split up and one of them starts seeing and hearing things that other people can’t. 

The first thing I have to say is that I enjoyed reading the book, as I think will any Doctor Who fan. That’s a good thing, but it can also make it very difficult to review, as any fan will already know who the three main characters are. Readers not familiar with the tv series can still enjoy the book. They will find it difficult to get to know the Doctor, Rose and Jack, as the information given about them is small and not all at the beginning. Also, some knowledge of the tv series is required to understand an important point, as it is an allusion to an episode.

It can be rather confusing sometimes, as the reader doesn’t know what is reality and what isn’t until the very end of the book and every person the main characters meet has a different version of the truth. This is important and explained in the end. While it forces the readers to pay more attention it also helps them to feel like one of the time travellers, as it is through the characters that they discover what’s really going on.

There are two important topics in this story that are well addressed. One is fear and the other is hope. The society in this alien planet has created a form of government to avoid problems. They had hoped to escape other planets’ problems, such as fights and wars; basically they wanted to avoid any kind of conflict and to live in peace. To achieve that they forbade any kind of fiction, hoping that if people only considered facts, feelings wouldn’t complicate things.

The problem is that when they forbade fiction, they also forbade people to dream, to hope. And it came to a point where any form of dream or story was feared and the people involved were punished.

Some of the secondary characters are members of an illegal group who try to save literature in any form and encourage each other to write stories, comic strips, poems... And that law that was created to preserve peace and avoid conflicts is what leads the people in that planet to a fight.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that the author succeeds in writing about such serious topics in a way children can understand, which is not always an easy thing to do.

24 HOUR READ-A-THON, OCT 22, 2011 Hours 20-24

HOUR 20
09:50
Woke up later than I thought. But I needed the sleep. Staying up 24 hours is ok, but 36 is a bit too much (the read-a-thon started at 2 PM for me).

I've picked a new book: The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons.

HOUR 21
10:35
The book is interesting: The Doctor, Rose and Jack land on a planet where any kind of fiction is forbidden. 

10:55 
This is the first time I'm doing this read-a-thon, but I'll definitely do the next ones, too.


HOUR 22
11:40
I'm still reading the second book and I hope to have it finished before the end of the read-a-thon.


HOUR 23
12:13
I've read almost half of the book. I'll post the total number of pages at the end of the event.
  
HOUR 24
13:57
I finished the second book :)

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? The last
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? Any Doctor Who books or good thrillers.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? None I can think of.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? There were many different challenges.
5. How many books did you read? 2
6. What were the names of the books you read? Winner Takes All and The Stealers of Dreams.
7. Which book did you enjoy most? The second one.
8. Which did you enjoy least? The fist one (I only read two).
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? I wasn't a cheerleader.
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? I'd love to participate again as a reader.

24 HOUR READ-A-THON, OCT 22, 2011 Hours 10-19

HOUR 10
23:10
Challenge: My perfect Anthology: http://readingromances.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/my-perfect-anthology/
The theme I’d choose is Vampires and Wizards. The authors would be Nancy Holder, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and Christopher Golden.

HOUR 11
0:20

Finished the first book! :) 

And now I'm going to sleep. Otherwise I think I would fall asleep on the keyboard. 

24 HOUR READ-A-THON, OCT 22, 2011 Hours 6-9

HOUR 6

19:20

I'm still reading the same book, but I hope to have it finished in the next two hours.


HOUR 7

20:54

I've almost finished the first book :)

Small break for dinner now, as I don't like to skip meals. 


HOUR 8

21:42

This hour's challenge took more time than I thought. I'm not good at interpreting songs, books etc.

http://whiteinkdrops.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/rat-challenge-a-music-bath/#comment-133

1. What song does the book I’m reading right now remind me of?
The Imperial March (from Star Wars).
2. What song does my favorite book remind me of?
My favourite book is Skellig by David Almond. It reminds me of “I’ll follow the sun” by The Beatles.
3. Can I find a connection between one of my favorite songs and a story I like?
Yellow Submarine (song) and The Little Prince (book). Both sound impossible but somehow make sense.

HOUR 9

22:34 
Challenge: Book Sentence Challenge

The Doctor Trap: solitary man breaking dawn.

Sorry for the bad quality of the picture, but no matter how I tried (with flash, without flash, not with natural light as it is over 10 PM here) the picture was never perfect.

24 HOUR READ-A-THON, OCT 22, 2011 - MINI CHALLENGES

Character Photo Mini Challenge

http://athomewithbooks.net/2011/10/character-photo-mini-challenge/

"My challenge for you is to take a photo of something that represents a character in one of the books you are reading for the readathon."

I'm reading "Winner Takes All" by Jacqueline Rayner. The stethoscope represents the Doctor, who is the main character.

24 HOUR READ-A-THON, OCT 22, 2011 Hours 1-5

IT STARTS...

HOURS 3-5

I'm still reading the same book. And had to go shopping for an hour, because I want to eat dinner and had forgotten to go in the morning XD


After looking at some people's blogs I think I'm going to put a post for every 3-4 hours and update the mini-challenges I try there, too, as it gets too confusing otherwise.


Reading update: I have read 51 pages. Not much for 5 hours, but I don't think I have anything else to do until dinner, so that number should get higher much faster now.