The Forever War

 

  
The Forever War
by Joe Haldeman
read: 2021
Guardian 1000 Novels, Hugo Award, Nebula Award

According to the Theory of Relativity, time moves differently for bodies traveling at different speeds. The difference is miniscule for bodies moving at planet-bound scales, but at faster-than-light speeds, this time dilation has a dramatic effect. That's the case for protagonist William Mandella, who returns centuries later to a very different earth after military tours of duty at far-flung planets. Sometimes the differences are good, usually they are bad, but always they are foreign and leave him feeling like a fish out of water.

This feeling pushes Mandella (and girlfriend Marygay) to re-enlist in the military, though he harbors no illusions about the morality of the army itself or the conflict he is embroiled in. Perhaps this is the only constant in Forever War: death is big business, and those who stand to profit off the war business have little consideration for the lives risked by those forced to wage those wars.

The Sot-Weed Factor

The Sot-Weed Factor
by John Barth
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels

This was a long, weird one. It was an entertaining read, and amusing at times with the distortions of historical events (like the "John Smith journals"). Some of the weird sex stuff, I dunno, I coulda done without.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
read: circa 2000
Guardian 1000 Novels

I read this back in college, but I had occasion to re-watch the movie adaptation (Blade Runner) again recently, as well as the belated sequel Blade Runner 2049. The latter movie got into the Dick-esque reality-bending mind-screwiness more than the former. 

Herzog

 

Herzog
by Saul Bellow
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

I got a sinking feeling about 2/3 of the way through that this was going to wind up being really dark. Instead it was sort of like The Corrections - more about a gradual realization than a big dramatic event. Would it have had deeper meaning for me if I had enough of a background in philosophy to appreciate a lot of the references that the titular Moses Herzog, an academic, makes? Maybe.

Rabbit, Run

  

Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
read: 2020
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

The canon of English-language literature is heavy on white dudes, and Rabbit, Run is one of the more white-dude-ier. Protagonist Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is married, with a good job, a son, and a baby on the way, but he's not happy, or something, so he just up and leaves. Is that compelling? Or is Rabbit just kind of an ass?

This Book Is Full of Spiders

 

This Book Is Full of Spiders
by David Wong
read: 2020

The sequel to John Dies at the End, This Book Is Full of Spiders has a more linear plot. There's still the combination of humor and horror present in the first book, but it loses a little bit of the madness of the original, where weird stuff came from everywhere unpredictably. But when I think about it, it's still pretty insane.

Brideshead Revisted

 

Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
read: 2020
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #80

I've read plenty of books with a protagonist of dubious moral quality: The Ginger Man, Money, and Under the Net come to mind. At first blush, Charles Ryder doesn't dabble in nearly the same level of depravity as the main characters of those works. Yes, he spends much of the novel's first half drunk and spending too much money, and the latter half of the book involves his adultery, but he's functional, prosperous, and well-liked.

The novel's ending makes clear that Charles has something missing, however. He's an avowed atheist and openly mocks the Catholic faith of the Flyte family. But the Flytes, who are on the surface even more flawed than Charles, find some redemption in their faith. Julia essentially commits the same sins as Charles (they have an affair) but she finds purpose in service through Catholicism. Sebastian, long lost abroad in alcoholism, finds some kind of symbiotic relationship with the church in North Africa. Even the physical chapel at Brideshead itself, long shuttered after the family matriarch's death, re-emerges in wartime. Charles will receive no such redemption, and by the novel's end, he knows it.