Month: February 2018

Today’s challenge – A book that makes you sad.

The first book that immediately popped into my head literally made me cry, and that almost never happens when I’m reading, no matter how heart-wrenching the content.  The book in question was <i>Challenger’s Hope</i>, which is the second book of David Feintuch’s Seafort saga — a space opera series which is, essentially, “Horatio Hornblower in Space.”  (So yeah, it was right up my alley.)

I was not expecting to be brought low by a rollicking space-navy adventure — but in the second book of the seven book series, (SPOILERS AHEAD, OBVIOUSLY — so stop reading if you care in the slightest), the main character’s wife miscarries, and is so grief-stricken that she kills herself.  She throws herself out of the airlock because, being on a ship, of course, they had a funeral for the child where they had jettisoned the body, and in her note she says she hears the baby crying, he’s cold so she’s going to bring him a blanket.

WRECKED ME.

Of course, this is because at the point I read this, I had a baby in the house, and I was doing that father-of-a-baby thing and CONSTANTLY checking on him.  So yeah, it hit me HARD.

So there ya go — scarred forever by Hornblower In Space, to the point where it leaps immediately to mind for this question.

 

 

Today’s challenge: A book that makes you happy.

Not a great question, because when I’m reading, most books make me happy. But, to pick one in particular, I’d go with Brian Daley’s Han Solo novels — which I pretty much think of as one thing. This one is the first one I read, and I have fond memories of doing so, and so when I pick it up again from time to time, the recollection of those memories make me happy.

 

Today’s challenge: Your favorite book from your favorite series. I came to the Bond movies first, and became a fan, and then I discovered the books. On my parent’s bookshelves was a paperback edition of a Bond novel that had NOT been made into a movie (at the time, I was unaware of the weird comedy version produced at the height of Bondmania), so I snatched up the opportunity to read a book that had nothing to do with anything I’d seen. (The edition was not the one pictured, but one of the 1960s Signet paperbacks — which I still have.)

It remains, to this day, my favorite Bond novel, and has, in my opinion, the best closing line in a thriller novel EVER. I was ecstatic when the book was finally adapted to film in the Bond series proper — and, modernization aside, became one of the most faithful adaptations of the series.