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Uttara Kalamrita by Kalidasa

"Room"-Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

I am re-rereading "Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement.

It is a hard sci-fi novel that involves an obtuse planet (a fascinating concept in of itself). It also has an alien centipede as one of the protagonists.

Pure awesomeness. Films and tv shows pale in comparison to classic writers like this.

I've been reading Shadowland by Alyson Noel. It's from her immortal series. I'm a sucker for paranormal and this is actually quite good. I'm only in the second book but that's just due to a short attention span. >w<

http://www.immortalsseries.com/ You can read more about her stuff here. ^^

Kind of a rough start ,the English is very basic and hammy sometimes but once I got use to it I found the book quite enjoyable. I've watched some of Zeta and the other UC OVAs but never fully watched the original Gundam 79 so this is a very interesting book. Its quite different from the anime and in ways more brutal but nothing too graphic. I think its a nice touch that Tomino added little illustration to some of the pages too, for those that aren't as versed in the show.

As far as stand alone scifi I think its enjoyable, I wouldn't rate near Asimov or Joe Haldeman, but its a very cool concept I'm biased because I love the UC Gundam and the mecha genre ,the novel does a very good explaining terms and how different mechanisms work. The novelization isn't trash quite literature but its not trash-pulp like video game based novels. Its a good (lengthy!) read. I'm pleasantly surprised at how well its turned out, the first 20 pages of horrible dialog really put a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know if the translator picked up the slack or if I just adapted. Thankfully there's no engrish, its just that some of the sentences and phrases people say sound kind of weird. Like Amuro, the protagonist, steps on what he thinks is a log but it is in fact a charred human corpse. He comments on what a beautiful color the exposed capillaries and blood make underneath such an ugly charred human corpse. Ok...ay....

reading bits of but not all of Das Capital by marx for my assignment. i was having trouble researching it then i realised marx lived and died so i could finish my assignment.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. I'm just about done and I really enjoyed reading it so far. Can't wait to finish it!

Started this yesterday after finishing Mobile Suit Gundam, finished a couple of minutes ago. It was definitely quality science fiction, the dragging of Jack Crow's story annoyed me for awhile because I liked reading more about the battles on Banshee with the ants but the writer did an excellent job at the end intertwining both stories. The ending was extremely satisfying as well as shocking and I find myself depressed now that Jon Steakley died before finishing Armor 2.

The split narrative might annoy readers, especially with the dramatic shift, you go from a more typical Starship Troopers style of story (or what appears to be..) to the story of a convict/celebrity who narrowly manages to escape from prison. Also instead of a focus on the actual aliens (which are giant ants with near infinite numbers) like in other stories the focus here is on the human element, namely Felix, a scout who always has the lowest rated odds of survival..yet combat drop after combat drop he just will not die. He develops an additional personality. The Engine, with which he uses to cope with the hopeless war and to survive. Often Felix will go on drops and he will be the only person to survive out of hundreds, if not more. Despite the horrible injuries, emotional scarring and terrible odds the upper brass keep sending him on drop after drop, the same planet over and over. There is lots of action but this is more of a psychological story than Aliens, people either love or hate Jack Crow's narrative but it is very important to the story and even if it drags on a bit there is a huge payoff at the end.

Not to say the rest of the book isn't great, it is, but if you're the kind of person who has a shorter attention span or just want more s**t to get blown up by space soldiers in nuclear armor..well, you're in for a disappointment, I guess. I don't like using the word "disappointment" with this book because its such classic scifi. If you don't like this book then you just don't appreciate the best the genre has to offer.

Reading Merri Cyr - A Wished-For Song

Its about Jeff Buckley, but there's not much to read, it's lots of quotes from those who knew him and photographs.
Lovely book though.

"Clara's War"-Clara Kramer

This heart-stopping story of a young girl hiding from the Nazis is based on Clara Kramer's diary of her years surviving in an underground bunker with seventeen other people.

Clara Kramer was a typical Polish-Jewish teenager from a small town at the outbreak of the Second World War. When the Germans invaded, Clara's family was taken in by the Becks, a Volksdeutsche (ethnically German) family from their town. Mrs. Beck worked as Clara's family's housekeeper. Mr. Beck was known to be an alcoholic, a womanizer, and a vocal anti-Semite. But on hearing that Jewish families were being led into the woods and shot, Beck sheltered the Kramers and two other Jewish families.

Eighteen people in all lived in a bunker dug out of the Becks' basement. Fifteen-year-old Clara kept a diary during the twenty terrifying months she spent in hiding, writing down details of their unpredictable life—from the house's catching fire to Mr. Beck's affair with Clara's neighbor; from the nightly SS drinking sessions in the room above to the small pleasure of a shared Christmas carp.

Against all odds, Clara lived to tell her story, and her diary is now part of the permanent col-lection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Reading this right now, will probably finish tomorrow. About a civilian's transition into becoming an A-4 pilot. Really love all the details about flight training back in the good ol'days (60s), though its a bit dryer than Bogeys and Bandits. I still am enjoying the book a lot and love all the factual information and reading about the writer's experiences.

The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson

It's a nutrition/fitness book, kind of based around the Paleo concept.

How Art Made the World, by Nigel Spivey

My current list of things on the go this week (I go through a minimum of 3 books a week):

Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky
America Rising: Power and Political Economy in the First Nation by David Felix
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
One World: The Ethics of Globalization by Peter Singer
The Global Class War by Jeff Faux