Karl's Reading List

Published by Faber & Faber Limited: London, 2021. A few years ago I heard that Taika Waititi was developing this novel to be his next movie. It was filmed, and then delayed, and delayed again, and then nothing was heard about it. Recently, I wondered what had happened to the film, and then became curious about the book, which led to me getting it out from the school library last week. The next day, the trailer for the movie version was released . Perfect timing, right?! The book itself surprised me, in good ways. I didn't know much about it, and resisted the urge to find out, even when the book seemed to be headed in some fairly dark directions! Klara and the Sun is told from the perspective of the titular Klara, an "Artificial Friend" (robot) who is eventually sold to become the friend of Josie, a girl who is sick from some undefined (in the beginning) illness. Klara is innocent, though not naive. She sees much and takes in a lot, but her thoughts and feelings are al...

Published by Walker Books Ltd: Vauxhall Walk, London, 2008. Book 1 in the 'Chaos Walking' series. Followed by 'The Ask and the Answer.' I knew of this book. I knew it had also been made into a not-very-well-received movie. I knew that it was set on a planet where all of the men uncontrollably broadcast their thoughts and the women had disappeared. I knew it was a Young Adult novel and part of a well-loved trilogy. I didn't know it would be so gory and heavy. There is a lot of death in The Knife of Letting Go, including much loved supporting characters, and even (keeping it a little vague to avoid spoiling too much) some characters that most books would avoid killing in order to keep the audience from disliking the narrative too much. The main character even has an arc where he is unable to kill people, and as a result, things keep getting worse. Considering this to be a weakness, he eventually pushes himself to kill - a horrific moment in the book that I felt sure w...

Published by Lawrence & Gibson Publishing Collective: Aoetearoa/New Zealand, 2023. Taking a break from looking at potential Level 2 texts, this is a potential Level 1 text instead! At the heart of Turncoat is an extended metaphor, an allegory, in which Māori culture and worldview is represented by the book's portrayal of humanity as a whole, and non-Māori culture - aka, the European-centric worldview - is represented by literal aliens, who invaded in past centuries and have now interbred with humanity to the point that most humans look just like them. Our main character, Daniel, is one such human, who understands and operates in Alien culture (called the Hierarch) all the time, but still seeks to influence the Hierarch to honour the original covenants they signed with humanity all those years ago. The metaphor isn't subtle, and at times it purposefully (often humorously) becomes incredibly obvious, particularly for readers from New Zealand. So, in place of Captain Cook bein...

Published by Gollancz/Hachette UK: London, 2019 (2018). Book 2 of the 'Skyward' series. Preceded by ' Skyward. ' Followed by 'Cytonic.' Two years ago I read the first book in this series, and quite enjoyed it. Our main protagonist, Spensa, followed her dream of becoming a pilot on a planet that was constantly fighting off alien invaders. She found a hidden ship, M-Bot, with an advanced AI system (that often uses what I now recognise as Sanderson's trademark quipping style), and helped save the day, while unlocking her special 'powers' - very on point for Sanderson, but not at all a negative. This book, like so many of Sanderson's sequels, ups the stakes considerably from what has come before. Suddenly, Spensa is thrust into a far greater universe than she had previously known, having to impersonate an alien species and infiltrate Starsight, an advanced space-station that is home to the aliens who have been attacking Spensa's planet, but who m...

Published by The Watts Publishing Group: Great Britain, 2018. I picked up this book in a cheap sale at a local book shop, and began reading it in class to see what it was like. Having finished a few other books so far in the holiday period, I now have had the time to finish this one as well. Set in a future where most of the world has had technological implants allowing them to see and interact with augmented reality at all times, Nova is a hacker who uses her skills to skim money and survive. When she manages to hack her way into a fairly 'unhackable' program, she catches the attention of a master hacker named The Moth, who hires Nova to go undercover in Bliss Inc - who manufacture the vast majority of the tech people use - and learn what they are planning.  It is an interesting set-up, and much of the story is an interesting variation on some stock-standard science-fiction tropes, but probably isn't one I'll hang on to going forward. There are a few twists and turns t...

Published by Picador/Pan Macmillan: London, 2019. Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot, 2019. Originally published in Japanese as  Coffee Ga Samenai Uchini,  2015. For the second time this year , I have been lent a book by a student to read (though a different student), and once again it is a book originally written in Japanese! The similarities end there, however. Where No Longer Human was bleak and depressing, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is wistful, whimsical, melancholic and also somewhat sweet. It is also science fiction, with a hint of fantasy thrown in (there is a ghost, who can curse people; its not a big deal). Author Kawaguchi has adapted the storyline of the book from a play that he wrote, and at times that previous format shows through. Characters speak their feelings out in order to give us context, even when the narration has already told us the relevant information, or will go on to do so. The book also keeps its one setting very strongly, although the set up helps...

Published by Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest NSW, Australia, 2015. This Young-Adult book follows a group of teenagers with unusual super-powers. Ethan/Scam has a voice that can be used to reveal secrets and manipulative people but that he cannot filter or control when he is using it, Riley/Flicker is blind but can see through the eyes of nearby people, Chizara/Crash can 'feel' electronic signals in the air around her (that cause her discomfort) and can also 'crash' them, Thibault/Anonymous has the (uncontrollable) power of being forgotten and diverting attention from himself, and Nate/Bellwether (the self-appointed leader of the group) can influence people's behaviour by talking to them. The group also meet a sixth individual, Kelsie/Mob, who can influence the emotions of groups of people. As may already be apparent, most of these powers have a downside to them. Thibault, particularly, finds friendships difficult to maintain, while Ethan's power gets him into trou...

Published by Arrow Books Ltd/Random House UK Ltd: London, UK, 2000 (1999). A while ago, Elise and I borrowed three books from some friends. One of them was The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents , I don't actually remember what the second one was (perhaps it was the Scarlet Pimpernel Omnibus ? Or, was that the book we lent to them in return?), and the third one was this one. The aim was that we would read these books together, but that only happened with the omnibus. The Amazing Maurice was briefly explored by both of us, but I carried it on solo, and this one had something similar: Elise and I read about 100 pages together, but it was a little slow for that combined reading, so in the end, I finished it off myself. Looking back through my blog, I realise just how long we had Timeline sitting around before even beginning it, and then it took another (shorter) period of time for me to decide to carry it on after Elise and I gave up on it... It's definitely about time we gi...

Published as an audiobook by Dragonsteel, 23-04-2023. Narrated by William DeMeritt. Originally published 2023. This is one of four 'secret project' books that Brandon Sanderson released in 2023, along with Tress of the Emerald Sea , The Frugal Wizard's Guide to Medieval England , and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and is the third I have read. It is also the one of the four that has the strongest connection to Sanderson's 'cosmere' universe, often referencing characters and even events from his Stormlight Archives series, that began with The Way of Kings. If all this sounds like a lot of connective tissue, then brace yourself. The Sunlit Man may take place on a planet that has previously not been visited within the cosmere, but the main character, Nomad, is someone who has in the past been a knight radiant on Roshar (the main setting of the Stormlight Archives ). Not only that, but as the story progresses, it is revealed that he is a specific character from the...

Published by Pan Books Ltd/Fabbri Publishing Ltd: Barcelona, Spain, 1992. First published 1895. One of HG Wells' most famous stories, The Time Machine is an 1895 novella that popularised the term 'time machine' itself! The novella is a very easy read, and not quite as grim as some of HG Wells' stories - though it still manages to be mildly cynical about the development of humankind. Our protagonist, only ever referred to as 'The Time Traveller', is an inventor who, at the beginning of the book, hosts some dinners, where he firstly demonstrates a model time machine, and then - arriving late and in quite a bad state to the second dinner - tells his guests (including our un-named narrator) the tale of time travelling that makes up the rest of the main narrative. The Time Traveller tells how he travelled forward to the year 802,701, where he encountered two species descended from modern humans: the innocent child-like Eloi, and the subterranean cannibalistic Morloc...

Published by Victor Gollancz Ltd: London, 1974 (1963). First published 1949. I first read this story as a kid, and have fond memories of it. It is also very weird, something that Elise pointed out as well. This is the only book I have read (so far) of Robert A Heinlein, and yet I know by reputation that he was a prominent science-fiction writer in his day. This book, first written in 1949, is certainly of its day. We get a Mars with canals, native plant and animal life, and a sentient Martian species with ruined cities on the surface and still-thriving (if less populated) sections underground.  Our main character, Jim Marlowe Jr, is a teenager living in South Colony. He has befriended a local 'bouncer', a basketball-sized Martian creature that can perfectly mimic what it hears, parrot-like, and also has some level of intelligence. 'Willis', as Jim calls the creature, is a hugely important part of the plot, helping Jim and his friend Frank get out of numerous scrapes, as...

Published by Tui/HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Ltd: Auckland, NZ, 1994. Book 3 in 'The Solar Colonies.' Preceded by ' The Ghosts of Triton. ' Elise and I (along with Ezekiel) have just returned from a two-week holiday/church ministry time in Australia, visiting friends in Tasmania and Melbourne. It was a great trip, with lots to unpack, but one without a lot of time for reading. Also, the main book I've been working my way through - Moby Dick - is in a big omnibus, which would have weighed too much to justify taking on the plane.  So, instead, I took two books with me that were a little bit smaller, one of which - Fear and Trembling - I was already part of the way through, and the other - this one - a book that I knew was an easy read to unwind with in the little bit of downtime I would find. Both were finished while in Australia, but this one (the easier read) was the first I completed. Both of the two Solar Colonies books I have read have had a differen...

Published by Noisy Crow Ltd: Crosby Row, London, 2021. Having finished Scavenger: Zoid too quickly to use in the Reading Challenge, I needed another book featuring AI or robots, and got this one from the school library, knowing nothing about it except what I saw on the cover. In a lot of ways, Adam-2 is similar to Scavenger: Zoid. It is set in the distant future, in a world where robots have turned on humanity and now pockets of humans try to resist against them. Like in Scavenger: Zoid, a more sophisticated robot is introduced who starts trying to help the humans. That robot develops a friendship with a main human, while other main humans remain suspicious. The difference here is that the robot - the titular Adam-2 - is the main character, whereas the robot in Scavenger: Zoid was a supporting character. Having the story be told primarily from Adam's viewpoint is an interesting touch, particularly as Adam learns about both sides in the conflict and begins to have doubts about the ...

Published by Macmillan Children's Books: London, Basingstoke and Oxford, 2014. I began reading this book in class when I was nearing the end of reading The Jungle Books , by Rudyard Kipling. I had selected The Jungle Books to fit the next category on the reading challenge I'm doing this year, and decided that I was near enough the end of that book that starting this one (which fits the   category after that one) was safe enough, especially since I would only be able to read this during silent reading times, and it would likely take a while. Whoops. I under-estimated how busy my home life would be, how slow The Jungle Books would be, and how quickly I'd get through this book, which probably took just over a week of class time! So, now, I find myself in the mildly annoying situation of having read a book that fits the 'robots or AI' category of the challenge, but - because of my self-imposed rule of doing them in order - not being able to use it. And I only finished i...

Published as an audiobook by Audible Studios, released 04-05-2021. Audiobook narrated by Ray Porter. Originally published 2021. This book surprised me, despite being very much what I expected. I know that author Andy Weir wrote The Martian (aka, the book that the 'Matt Damon growing potatoes on Mars' movie was based on) and expected that, like that book, this one was going to be a science-heavy piece of science-fiction. Tick. The plot of Project Hail Mary unfolds gradually, with protagonist Dr Ryland Grace awakening from a medically induced coma in a mysterious location, being tended to by a mysterious medical robot. To begin with, he is suffering from amnesia (Grace tells us that long-term comas are not good for people, and that it must have scrambled his brain), but as he slowly regains his memories he realises he is on a mission to save all of humanity. A "space bacteria" - given the name 'Astrophage' by Grace - is slowly consuming the light from the sun, a...

Published by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd: London, 2014. This is a weird book that's been on my classroom library shelf for quite a while. The main character, Travis, had terminal cancer five years ago, and agreed to have his head cryogenically frozen, in the hope that in the future it would be possible to attach it to a donor body. Now, he has woken up, only the second patient to successfully have the procedure complete, to find that everyone in his world, including his parents, his best friend and his girlfriend, have lived five extra years of life. Travis is sixteen, and the difference between a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old is a much bigger difference than it would have been had Travis been an adult. Also, his girlfriend Cate is now engaged to someone else. The difference between a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old is also small enough that it is conceivable that Cate and Kyle (his former best friend) would also still be keen to in-some-way have Travis back i...

Published as an audiobook by Dragonsteel, LLC., 2023. Narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Originally published 2023. As the title might suggest, this is a humorous book about a modern-era man who ends up posing as a wizard in a medieval-style England. As we dig into the story a little, we learn that he's not technically in the real medieval England, but rather a parallel dimension that resembles medieval England. He's also not technically a modern-era man, with the book being set a little into the future (allowing for dimension travel, as well as minor technological augments and nanites). This is smart writing from Sanderson, as it allows him to create a world that seems medieval, without needing to do too much worrying about absolute historical accuracy. In terms of story, our hero awakens in a field, surrounded by scorch marks and the scattered pages of a half-burnt copy of the titular handbook. He has amnesia, which is a great way for us to learn about him as he lea...

Published by Little, Brown and Company: New York/Boston, 2016. This book was lent to me by a student, which is the first time I've had that happen! Thanks, Savana! I became interested in reading this story when I saw the first trailer for the upcoming movie version . That trailer, almost completely dialogue-free, seems to imply a beautifully animated and heart-warming story about a robot befriending wild animals and creating a home on a forested island, told entirely visually and musically. The book (as well as the second trailer ) have a lot more dialogue in them, and although I can confirm that the story is a good one, I do also kinda want to see that dialogue-free arthouse animated film. However, although I wanted a dialogue-free book, the book I did get was a sweet story, with some great messages in it. Roz is a robot that accidentally washes up on a small island after a shipwreck, and slowly adjusts to life on the island. To begin with, the local animals think Roz is a monster...

Published by Puffin Audiobooks. Date unknown.  Narrated by James Bolam. Preceded by 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' Wow. The contrast between this book and the previous book in the duology is incredible. Both focus on Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka, but whereas the earlier book has the tight narrative structure of the competition and the factory tour to keep it bound, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator has no such limitations, and gives Dahl the free reign to go into out-of-this-world (literally, of a good chunk of the book) weirdness. Picking up right where Chocolate Factory left off, Glass Elevator follows Charlie, Willy Wonka, Grandpa Joe, Charlie's parents and (in the greatest increase of relevance to the plot) his other three grandparents, who remain bed-ridden for almost the entire book. Of the protagonists of the first book, Grandpa Joe's role suffers the most, with the elderly man reduced to a supporting role, and being left out of one side-quest altoget...

Published by Doubleday/Random House Children's Books: London, Great Britain, 2012. Followed by 'Enders.' This book with a weird and striking cover has been sitting on my classroom bookshelf for a while. I decided just to browse it to see if it was suitable to keep in the classroom, and got a lot more caught up in the plot than I expected. Set in a dystopian future, the world of Starters is one where a virus has decimated the population, leaving only the elderly (or 'Enders') and young people (or 'Starters') behind. This interesting dynamic is explained because those were the two groups most vulnerable to a coming biological attack, and therefore were the groups first immunized against it. The power dynamic is heavily weighted on the side of Enders, with enough medical breakthroughs meaning that they can live for a few hundred years, and laws passed meaning that they are the only ones who can vote, or work. Starters are second-class citizens, and those who ha...