
The Sparrow - jacquesm
http://hn-books.com/Books/The-Sparrow.htm
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cobralibre
I do not share the majority opinion on _The Sparrow_ , but I'd rather be
positive and suggest a few alternatives which I feel deal more inventively
with the themes of first contact, the alien, and colonialism: Gene Wolfe's
_The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ and Stanislaw Lem's _Eden_ , _Solaris_ , _The
Invincible_ , and _Fiasco_.

Wolfe does a fine job of modulating his prose style according to the dictates
of his content, and unpacking the workings of the book over repeated readings
is a pleasure -- both admirably Joycean qualities in a writer.

Lem I admire for his commitment to imagining the alien as something truly
alien, resistant to simple analogies with our existing store of experience.

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prestia
I'll definitely give this one a read soon. I'm currently reading The Mote in
God's Eye, which is another book that explores first contact with an alien
race. I have a long ways to go, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Give Mote a
shot if this sort of subject matter interests you.

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michaelbuckbee
You might also want to checkout Accellerando by Charlie Stross. It has some
really interesting notions of building businesses and future craziness in it
as well.

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dochtman
I really like all of Charlie's books. The Laundry books are definitely
different; closer to fantasy in fact, but still nicely in touch with hacker
mentality.

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jpzeni
Thanks for the recommendation.

I've been in the mood for just that type of can't put down read. But after
googling for 'book reviews', 'top books' and 'books you can't put down', etc
and other similar queries I just got a bunch bestseller lists and spammy
adsense sites. Weird

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Looking for a good read? Follow these directions:

1) Go to amazon <http://www.amazon.com>

2) Pick your genre

3) Sort by reviews

4) Pick the books with the most number of positive reviews

5) Read a few of the negative ones

6) Go out to Google and search for the books you selected

7) Pick up reviews from other non-book-review sites, like hn or reddit

8) Confirm selection by comparing notes from various sources

9) Get the book to read

Or you can just go to <http://hn-books.com> and let somebody else do all of
that for you

EDIT: It occurs to me that perhaps you're making a snarky comment which I'm
ignoring, but just be aware that the biggest problem in finding great books
isn't piss-poor search strings and frustrating google search results: it's
fans who love author X and are going to give him/her positive reviews no
matter what they write. It makes it difficult to use review systems. I don't
think that in a net of a billion people and a trillion web pages you're ever
going to find a simple method for locating a good book to read that's going to
stay the same over any length of time. There's simply not enough description
in "good book to read" to have any meaning. There's a huge amount of implied
context that is relevant but not supplied.

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wglb
I really did not like this book. There were too many cusp points of stupidity,
like "i am going to smash the next person who comes through that door" and
kills an unintended victim. And the translation error that leads to the
unfortunate hand modification, for someone who was such a genius at learning
languages was not credible.

The whole precept of the book was done in a ham-handed way. The idea of a
fallen sparrow being noticed, but not saved, and watched to suffer and die
seemed to be an indication of a personal ax to grind on the part of the
author.

I do read a lot of science fiction, but this book seems more like "everything
you who are religious know is wrong" rather than Arthur C Clarke's invention
of staggeringly different ideas about first contact. There is more imagination
in the original short story "2001" than in both of the volumes in this set.

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arundelo
I thought this book was great, but I also found it quite disturbing. Some
pretty bad stuff happens in it.

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jsulak
I read it several years ago and concur - it's well worth the read.

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DanielBMarkham
Have you read the sequel? I haven't read any reviews of it. I was wondering if
it was as good as the first book.

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locopati
Worth reading, but not as good as the Sparrow.

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DanielBMarkham
Without giving away any of the plot, the thing I liked about The Sparrow was
the huge factor of the unknown. The entire story had this feeling that you
just didn't know where it was going -- a sense of uneasiness.

I don't see how you could do that the same way again, at least not in the same
universe.

But I've got it on my kindle anyway. Sometimes first books are so good you
have to read the second one just to see where the author wants to take the
story.

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ry0ohki
I enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down, but was sad to find out the
sequel was not about getting vengeance, which would have been awesome.

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DanielBMarkham
This was the best sci-fi book I've read in many years. Tightly plotted and
full of deep ideas and stuff to make you think. Had a blast reading it. Can't
recommend it enough.

