54 So Far...
I love to read. I read at least one book a week and have done so for years. I thought I might throw them onto a lense so I could keep track of what I have read and also recommend them.
There are a few graphic novels on here. I wasn't originally going to include them since they are comic books but they are such literary achievements, I felt I had to.
Jumper, Reflex, & Griffin's Story
Steven Jay Gould
Jumper: A Novel (Jumper)
Jumper is a 1992 science fiction novel by Steven Gould. It tells the story of Davy, a teenager who has just escaped an abusive household. Davy discovers that he can teleport himself by using his thoughts, although he doesn't know how it works. As he tries to make his way alone in the world, he looks for his long-lost mother and uses his talent for criminal activities and to foil hijackers around the globe.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008) 
Reflex (Jumper)
Davy, a young man who in the previous novel discovered he can teleport anywhere he wants using his thoughts, is now an adult and trying to lead a normal life with his wife Millie. He occasionally does work for the NSA, but only jobs that he finds morally acceptable. During a meeting with his handler, he is kidnapped by a powerful group hoping to use his ability for their own nefarious purposes.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Jumper: Griffin's Story (Jumper)
The backstory for Griffin (From the film). Slightly different than the previous two books but a good story for the new character.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Forever War & Forever Free
Joe Haldeman
The Forever War
The Forever War is a 1974 science fiction novel by Joe Haldeman. It won the Nebula Award in 1975 and the Hugo Award in 1976. Both an action-laden and contemplative story of an interstellar war between humanity and the enigmatic Tauran species, it deals with themes like the inhumanity of both war and its attendant bureaucracy, as well as with the results of time dilation space travel which may cause a soldier to return to his home only after centuries have gone by.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
Forever Free
William Mandella, protagonist of The Forever War, and his wife Marygay are now married and live on the icy world Middle Finger. As in the first novel, they are dissatisfied with the state of society so they eventually decide to jump forward in time again, using the relativistic speed of interstellar travel. They, along with other Forever War veterans, hope that whatever they will find upon their return will be more to their liking.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
Interworld & The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
InterWorld
InterWorld is a fantasy and science fiction novel by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. The book was published in 2007 by EOS, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. It follows the story of Joey Harker who, together with a group of other Joeys from different earths in other parallel universes, try to stop the two forces of magic and science from taking over all of the earths in different universes.
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Graveyard Book
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.
He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.
There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.
But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack-who has already killed Bod's family. . . .
Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.
Amazon Price: $10.79 (as of 11/22/2008)
Dune Series
Frank Herbert
Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition (Dune Chronicles, Book 1)
Dune is set far in the future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar empire where planetary fiefdoms are controlled by noble Houses that owe allegiance to the Imperial House Corrino. The novel tells the story of young Paul Atreides (heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and scion of House Atreides) as he and his family relocate to the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the spice melange, the most important and valuable substance in the universe. In a story that explores the complex and multilayered[4] interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, the fate of Paul, his family, his new planet and its native inhabitants, as well as the Padishah Emperor, the powerful Spacing Guild, and the secretive female order of the Bene Gesserit, are all drawn together into a confrontation that will change the course of humanity.
Amazon Price: $11.56 (as of 11/22/2008)
Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles, Book 2)
In 1965 Frank Herbert published Dune. After it was heralded as a masterpiece of science fiction, he wrote the briefer Dune Messiah in 1969, concentrating eponymously on Paul Atreides, and then, sensing the sales potential, added sequels. They were continued by his son, culminating in the just published finale, Sandworms of Dune. Now, 38 years after its publication, four narrators capture Dune Messiah on discs, while listeners, with no glossary, try to recall the meaning of its esoteric nomenclature. The audio gets off to a lively start as the book opens with nearly all conversation, playing up the camaraderie between the narrators who have partnered on several other readings of classic sci-fi novels. While the cast works well together, some of the male narrators emphasize a stately dullness. Kellgren, the sole feminine voice, supplies real emotion and a true sense of awe.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Children of Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 3)
Book Three in the original Dune series relies heavily upon the events and the background of the first two books. Leto and Ghanima, twin children of Paul Atreides, are old beyond their years, as they hold the genetic memories of their ancestors. Climate change on the planet Arrakis threatens the desert life of the Fremen, the sandworms, and the production of spice. Simon Vance anchors this full-cast production. He is engaged with the characters and the complex plot. His presentation of the many characters is skillful, and the narrative passages never lag. Vance has a serious but light touch and deals adeptly with suspense, dissension, philosophical musings, and fanatical ravings.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Series)
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Trilogy: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless
The novels are described as "a trilogy in five parts", having been described as a trilogy on the release of the third book, and then a "trilogy in four parts" on the release of the fourth book. The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy" on the cover. Subsequent re-releases of the other novels bore the legend "The [first, second, third, fourth] in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy." In addition, the blurb on the fifth book humourously describes the book as "the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word 'trilogy'".
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
The Robot Series
Isaac Asimov
I, Robot
I, Robot is a collection of nine English language science fiction short stories by Isaac Asimov, first published by Gnome Press in 1950 in an edition of 5,000 copies. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950. The stories are woven together as if Dr Susan Calvin is telling them to a reporter (the narrator) in the 21st century. Though the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, robots and morality, and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Caves of Steel (Robot City)
The Caves of Steel is a novel by Isaac Asimov. It is essentially a detective story, and illustrates an idea Asimov advocated, that science fiction is a flavor that can be applied to any literary genre, rather than a limited genre itself.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Naked Sun
Like its predecessor, The Caves of Steel, it is a whodunit story, in addition to being science fiction. The book was first published in 1957 after being serialised in Astounding Science Fiction between October and December 1956.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Robots of Dawn
The Robots of Dawn is a "whodunit" science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, first published in 1983. It is part of Asimov's Robot series.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Robots and Empire
Robots and Empire is a 1985 science fiction novel written by Isaac Asimov. It is part of the Robot Series.
This book reconciles two of Asimov's main series, the Robot series and the Empire series (continued later in the Foundation series), uniting them into a single future history in retcon fashion. We see the transition from a mixed humanity-robot universe, dominated by the increasingly robotic societies of the Spacer Worlds, to a human-only Galactic Empire one.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
The Empire Series
Isaac Asimov
The Stars, Like Dust
The Stars, Like Dust is a 1951 science fiction book by writer Isaac Asimov.
The book is part of Asimov's Galactic Empire series. It takes place before the actual founding of the Galactic Empire, and even before Trantor has become important. It starts with a young man attending the University of Earth. Biron Farrill is the son of the greatest nobleman on the planet Nephelos, one of the Nebula Kingdoms. The story starts with the news that his father has been caught conspiring against the Tyranni.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
The Currents of Space
It is the second book in a sequence of three that are classified as the Galactic Empire series. Each occurs after humans have settled many worlds in the galaxy - after the second wave of colonisation that went beyond the Spacer worlds - and before the era of decline that was the setting for the original Foundation series. Each of the three is only loosely connected to other works, being separated by a fairly large gulf of centuries.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
Pebble in the Sky
Pebble in the Sky is a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, published in 1950.
This work is his first novel - parts of the Foundation series had appeared from 1942 onwards, in magazines, but Foundation was not published in book form until 1951. The original Foundation books are also a string of linked episodes, whereas this is a complete story involving a single group of characters.
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 11/22/2008)
Boomsday
Christopher Buckley
Boomsday
Boomsday is a political satire by Christopher Buckley. It is a comical novel about Social Security reform. In Boomsday, the rivalry between squandering Baby Boomers and younger generations of Americans who don't want to be paying rising taxes, and how this disagreement create one of the strangest Washington battles in American history. Leading the movement is Cassandra Devine, a blogger, Randolph Jepperson, a presidential candidate, and Terry Tucker, a public relations guru.
Amazon Price: $16.49 (as of 11/22/2008)
Tuesdays With Morrie
Mitch Albom
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
Tuesdays with Morrie is a bestselling nonfiction, by American writer Mitch Albom, published in 1997 (ISBN 0-385-48451-8). The story was later adapted by Thomas Rickman into a television movie (directed by Mick Jackson), which aired on 1999 December 5 and starred Hank Azaria as Mitch and Jack Lemmon (in his final role) as Morrie.
It tells the true story of Morrie Schwartz and his relationship with his student, Mitch Albom. Both the film and the book chronicle the lessons about life that Mitch learns from his professor, who is dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Amazon Price: $11.16 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Boys From Brazil
Ira Levin
The Boys from Brazil - a Novel
Yakov Liebermann is an elderly gentleman who is known as a Nazi hunter: he runs a center in Vienna that documents crimes against humanity perpetrated during the Holocaust. The waning interest of the Western nations in tracking down Nazi criminals has forced him to move the center to his lodgings.
Then, in September 1974, Liebermann receives a disturbing phone call from a young man who claims he has just finished eavesdropping on the so-called "Angel of Death," Dr. Josef Mengele, the concentration camp medical doctor who performed horrible experiments on camp victims during World War II. According to the young man, Mengele is activating the Kameradenwerk for a strange assignment: he is sending out six Nazis to kill 94 men, who share a few common traits. All men are civil servants and all of them have to be killed on or about a certain date.
Before the young man can finish the conversation, there is a muffled sound of sudden action, followed by silence, and then the telephone line goes dead.
Liebermann hesitates about what to do: he gets so many prank calls. But what if what the young man said is true? He decides to try to investigate. It eventually transpires each of the 94 targets has a son aged 13, a clone of Hitler planted by Mengele. The assassination of the civil servant father is an attempt to mimic the death of Hitler's own father, with the hope of creating a new Führer for the Nazi movement. This suggests that the Third Reich can develop again into a new superpower.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
Stranger In A Strange Land
Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land is a best-selling 1961 Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians on the planet Mars, upon his return to Earth in early adulthood. The novel explores his interaction with - and eventual transformation of - Earth culture. The novel's title refers to the Biblical Book of Exodus. According to Heinlein in Grumbles from the Grave, the novel's working title was The Heretic. Several later editions of the book have promoted it as "The most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written."
Amazon Price: $11.53 (as of 11/22/2008)
The God Delusion
Prof. Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion
In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's observation in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
Amazon Price: $10.85 (as of 11/22/2008)
Skinny Dip, Tourist Season, & Nature Girl
Carl Hiaasen
Skinny Dip
Set in South Florida in the course of April, 2003, it is about a woman, Joey Perrone, who takes revenge on her cheating husband after he has tried to murder her. It is also one of Hiaasen's more topical novels, since the plot also revolves around the ongoing project to save the Florida Everglades as a natural habitat.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Nature Girl
Nature Girl is Honey Santana, a female version of Twilly Spreey (who Hiaason featured in Sick Puppy). Santana is divorced, raising a precocious 12 year old son Fry, and apparently suffers from bi-polar disorder. Santana's husband, Skinner, still loves his former wife and tries to run interference for her. She is known to do outrageous things "trying to demand more decency and consideration from her fellow human beings." When a hapless telephone solicitor, Boyd Shreave, interrupts her dinner time with her son and then calls her a rude name, Santana hatches a plot to teach Shreave some civility.
Amazon Price: $11.19 (as of 11/22/2008)
Tourist Season
P.I. Brian Keyes finds himself enmeshed in a bizarre string of crimes: a series of murders perpetrated by a radical group using carnivorous reptiles, both living and rubber, as weapons in an attempt to free Florida from overdevelopment.
Amazon Price: $11.19 (as of 11/22/2008)
Earth
David Brin
Earth
Brin uses the escape of a manmade black hole that is eating away at the Earth's core and a plausible future of sophisticated, instant universal and global computer data linkage and retrieval to reexamine, explore, and expand upon the themes regarding genetic creation and advancement begun in Star tide Rising (1983) and The Uplift War (1987, both Bantam). There is an element of suspense and intrigue as the characters scramble to define, find, and solve the black hole damage before each other and before it's too late. Although less engaging than the previously mentioned books, this is timely in its investigation of current ecological issues and includes a welcome annotated bibliography and list of environmental organizations and addresses.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
A Short History Of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bryson describes graphically how big the universe is, and how small atoms and subatomic particles are. Furthermore, he reports on the likeliness of the Earth being struck by a meteor, how unlikely it is that humans will spot a meteor before it impacts the Earth, and the extensive damage that such an event would cause. He also explores the history of biology, botany, and zoology, and traces life from its first appearance all the way to today's modern humans, placing much emphasis on the development of the modern Homo sapiens. All along the book, humorous stories about the scientists behind the discovery and their half-crazy behaviour is given. Throughout the book, there are many reports on the way humans change the Earth's climate and destroy other species, as well how the Earth was and is a very destructive planet itself, briefly touching about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and mass extinctions. His tendency to look for big explosions and awe-inspiring devastation takes him to the most destructive disasters in the history of the world, from Krakatoa to Yellowstone National Park.
Bryson ends the book by noting how many extinctions humans are responsible for, and how lucky mankind is to be living on planet Earth today.
Amazon Price: $11.53 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Watchmen
Alan Moore
Watchmen
Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since.
Amazon Price: $11.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Timeline & Airframe
Michael Crighton
Timeline
When you step into a time machine, fax yourself through a "quantum foam wormhole," and step out in feudal France circa 1357, be very, very afraid. If you aren't strapped back in precisely 37 hours after your visit begins, you'll miss the quantum bus back to 1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty abbots, mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat. You'll also have to dodge catapults that hurl sizzling pitch over castle battlements. On the social front, you should avoid provoking "the butcher of Crecy" or Sir Oliver may lop your head off with a swoosh of his broadsword or cage and immerse you in "Milady's Bath," a brackish dungeon pit into which live rats are tossed now and then for prisoners to eat.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Airframe
Cruising 35,000 feet above the earth, a twin-engine commercial jet encounters an accident that leaves 3 dead, 56 wounded, and the cabin in shambles. What happened? With a multi-billion-dollar company-saving deal on the line, Casey Singleton is sent by her hard-driving boss to uncover the mysterious circumstances that led to the disaster before more people die. But someone doesn't want her to find the truth. Airframe bristles with authentic information, technical jargon, and the command of detail Crichton's readers have come to expect.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Robot Dreams
Isaac Asimov
Robot Dreams (Masterworks of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Robot Dreams collects 21 of Isaac Asimov's short stories spanning the body of his fiction from the 1940s to the 1980s----exploring not only the future of technology, but the future of humanity's maturity and growth.
Amazon Price: (as of 11/22/2008)
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The Inspiration for the Upcoming Major Motion Picture
In 1860 Benjamin Button is born an old man and mysteriously begins aging backward. At the beginning of his life he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger he embraces life -- he goes to war, runs a business, falls in love, has children, goes to college and prep school, and, as his mind begins to devolve, he attends kindergarten and eventually returns to the care of his nurse.
Amazon Price: $9.95 (as of 11/22/2008)
I Am Legend
Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Graphic Novel)
Richard Matheson's classic novel of fear and vampirism is soon to be a major motion picture starring Will Smith. The tale of the last human on an Earth overrun by the undead - returns to graphic novel format in a single volume collection of four long out-of-print books.
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 11/22/2008)
Discworld Novels
Terry Pratchett
Pyramids
It's bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn't a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he's been trained at Ankh-Morpork's famed assassins' school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun.First, there's the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad -- a pyramid to end all pyramids. Then there are the myriad administrative duties, such as dealing with mad priests, sacred crocodiles, and marching mummies. And to top it all off, the adolescent pharaoh discovers deceit, betrayal -- not to mention aheadstrong handmaiden -- at the heart of his realm.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Guards! Guards!
Here there be dragons...and the denizens of Ankh-Morpork wish one huge firebreather would return from whence it came. Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis ("noble dragon" for those who don't understand italics) has appeared in Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King (it is a noble dragon, after all...).
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Eric
Eric is a singularly inept sorcerer who conjures up an even more inept wizard, Rincewind, and a sentient (also treacherous, vindictive, and unruly) footlocker named, of course, the Luggage. Not having got anything like what he bargained for, Eric is fated to go through the usual zany ordeals of a Pratchett protagonist, until he wishes he'd never been born. Nor do things really all work out in the end, even if Eric is better off than he expected to be through most of the book.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Darwin's Radio & Darwin's Children
Greg Bear
Darwin's Radio
All the best thrillers contain the solution to a mystery, and the mystery in this intellectually sparkling scientific thriller is more crucial and stranger than most. Why are people turning against their neighbors and their newborn children? And what is causing an epidemic of still births? A disgraced paleontologist and a genetic engineer both come across evidence of cover-ups in which the government is clearly up to no good. But no one knows what's really going on, and the government is covering up because that is what, in thrillers as in life, governments do. And what has any of this to do with the discovery of a Neanderthal family whose mummified faces show signs of a strange peeling?
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Darwin's Children
Darwin's Children, Greg Bear's follow-up to Darwin's Radio, is top-shelf science fiction, thrilling and intellectually charged. It's no standalone, though. The plot and characters are certainly independent of the previous novel, but the background in Darwin's Radio is essential to nonbiologists trying to understand what's going on. The next stage of human evolution has arrived, announced by the birth of bizarre "virus children." Now the children with the hypersenses and odd faces are growing up, and the world has to figure out what to do with them. The answer is evil and all too human, as governments put the kids in camps to protect regular folks from imagined dangers. Mitch and Kaye, scientists whose daughter Stella is swept up in the fray, become unwillingly involved in the politics that erupt around the issue of the new humans. Harrowing chases, gun battles, epidemics, and tense meetings about civil rights ensue, all brilliantly narrated. But just when you think you've got the book figured out, Bear throws a massive curveball by introducing... religion. That's right, a good old-fashioned epiphany, plopped down in the middle of a hard science fiction novel. But even skeptical readers will be swept along with Kaye as she tries to deal with what's happening to her and how it relates to the fate of her daughter's species. Keep reading past the words that make you uncomfortable--the hot science, the cool spirituality--and you'll be rewarded with a story of complete and moving humanity.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
William Goldman
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
The Princess Bride is a true fantasy classic. William Goldman describes it as a "good parts version" of "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure." Morgenstern's original was filled with details of Florinese history, court etiquette, and Mrs. Morgenstern's mostly complimentary views of the text. Much admired by academics, the "Classic Tale" nonetheless obscured what Mr. Goldman feels is a story that has everything: "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."
Amazon Price: $8.00 (as of 11/22/2008)
Wanted
Wanted
What if everything in your life was out of your hands and those around you propelled your fate? Your girlfriend left you for your best friend; your boss gave your job to someone better. What if then, after all this, someone gave you back total control? What if he revealed you were the next in line to join a secret society of super-villians that controlled the entire planet? Mark Millar and J.G. Jones provide a look at one man who goes from being the world's biggest loser to the deadliest assassin alive.
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 11/22/2008)
The Dark Knight Returns & The Dark Knight Strikes Again
Frank Miller
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
If any comic has a claim to have truly reinvigorated the genre, then The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller--known also for his excellent Sin City series and his superb rendering of the blind superhero Daredevil--is probably the top contender. Batman represented all that was wrong in comics and Miller set himself a tough task taking on the camp crusader and turning this laughable, innocuous children's cartoon character into a hero for our times. The great Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, the arguably peerless Watchmen) argued that only someone of Miller's stature could have done this. Batman is a character known well beyond the confines of the comic world (as are his retinue) and so reinventing him, while keeping his limiting core essentials intact, was a huge task.Miller went far beyond the call of duty. The Dark Knight is a success on every level. Firstly it does keep the core elements of the Batman myth intact, with Robin, Alfred the butler, Commissioner Gordon, and the old roster of villains, present yet brilliantly subverted. Secondly the artwork is fantastic--detailed, sometimes claustrophobic, psychotic. Lastly it's a great story: Gotham City is a hell on earth, street gangs roam but there are no heroes. Decay is ubiquitous. Where is a hero to save Gotham? It is 10 years since the last recorded sighting of the Batman. And things have got worse than ever. Bruce Wayne is close to being a broken man but something is keeping him sane: the need to see change and the belief that he can orchestrate some of that change. Batman is back. The Dark Knight has returned. Awesome.
Amazon Price: $10.19 (as of 11/22/2008)
Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
The Dark Knight Strikes Again is Frank Miller's follow-up to his hugely successful Batman: the Dark Knight Returns, one of the few comics that is widely recognized as not only reinventing the genre but also bringing it to a wider audience.Set three years after the events of The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again follows a similar structure: once again, Batman hauls himself out of his self-imposed retirement in order to set things right. However, where DKR was about him cleaning up his home city, Gotham, DKSA has him casting his net much wider: he's out to save the world. The thing is, most of the world doesn't realize that it needs to be saved--least of all Superman and Wonder Woman, who have become little more than superpowered enforcers of the status quo. So, the notoriously solitary Batman is forced to recruit some different superpowered allies. He also has his ever-present trusty sidekick, Robin, except that he is a she, and she is calling herself Catwoman. Together, these super-friends uncover a vast and far-reaching conspiracy that leads to the President of the United States (Lex Luthor) and beyond.
The Dark Knight Strikes Again is largely an entertaining comic, but much of what made The Dark Knight Returns so good just doesn't work here. Miller's gritty, untidy artwork was perfect for DKR's grim depiction of the dark and seedy Gotham City, but it jars a bit for DKSA, which is meant to depict an ultra-glossy, futuristic technocracy. Lynn Varley's garish coloring attempts to add a slicker sheen, but the artwork is ultimately let down by that which worked so well for DKR--this time around, it just feels sloppy and rushed. The same is true of the book's denouement, which happens so quickly that it leaves the reader reeling and looking for more of an explanation. Moreover, DKSA is packed full of characters who will mean little to those unfamiliar with the DC Comics universe (e.g., the Atom, the Elongated Man, the Question). Perhaps the book's biggest failing is that where The Dark Knight Returns gave comic book fans a base from which to evangelize to theuninitiated, The Dark Knight Strikes Again is just preaching to the converted. Comic book superhero fans will find much to enjoy here, but others would be better off sticking with the original.
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 11/22/2008)
Spin & Axis
Robert Charles Wilson
Spin
One night the stars go out. From that breathtaking "what if," Wilson (Blind Lake, etc.) builds an astonishingly successful mélange of SF thriller, growing-up saga, tender love story, father-son conflict, ecological parable and apocalyptic fable in prose that sings the music of the spheres. The narrative time oscillates effortlessly between Tyler Dupree's early adolescence and his near-future young manhood haunted by the impending death of the sun and the earth. Tyler's best friends, twins Diane and Jason Lawton, take two divergent paths: Diane into a troubling religious cult of the end, Jason into impassioned scientific research to discover the nature of the galactic Hypotheticals whose "Spin" suddenly sealed Earth in a "cosmic baggie," making one of its days equal to a hundred million years in the universe beyond. As convincing as Wilson's scientific hypothesizing is--biological, astrophysical, medical--he excels even more dramatically with the infinitely intricate, minutely nuanced relationships among Jason, Diane and Tyler, whose older self tries to save them both with medicines from Mars, terraformed through Jason's genius into an incubator for new humanity. This brilliant excursion into the deepest inner and farthest outer spaces offers doorways into new worlds--if only humankind strives and seeks and finds and will not yield compassion for our fellow beings.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Axis
In this outstanding sequel to Wilson's Hugo-winning Spin (2005), we are taken to the mysterious planet Equatoria, a world apparently engineered for humanity by the inscrutable machine intelligences known as the Hypotheticals. Turk Findley, a man with a criminal past, runs an aeronautical charter service on the newly settled planet. Lise Adams, who hires Turk, is a would-be journalist searching for her vanished father, a scientist obsessed with the Hypotheticals and their illegal life extension technology. Meanwhile, young Isaac, genetically manipulated by rogue scientists so that he may become a conduit between humanity and the AIs, is coming of age, and something enormous and unknown is assembling itself far underground. The various science and thriller plot elements are successful, but this is first and foremost a novel of character. Turk and Lise, who might well be played by Bogart and Bacall, are powerfully drawn protagonists, and their strong presence in the novel makes the wonders provided all the more satisfying. Those unfamiliar with Spin may flounder a bit, but Wilson's fans will be ecstatic.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)
Armageddon In Retrospect
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Posthumous)
Armageddon in Retrospect
Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II--an essay that is as timely today as it was then--to a painfully funny short story about three Army privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war, to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. Also included are Vonnegut's last speech as well as an assortment of his artwork, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut. Armageddon in Retrospect says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the writer.
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 11/22/2008)
Snuff
Chuck Pahlaniuk
Snuff
Palahniuk has followed his tendency towards sensationalism to its logical conclusion and written a novel about a pornographic film, to mixed reactions. Naysayers wrote that Snuff either failed in its satirical role or, worse, Palahniuk has simply run out of ideas and only wants to make readers cringe. Yet other reviewers felt that, as in previous novels, Palahniuk's strong, character-driven explorations of the unseemly actually reveal a great deal about our society. Certainly, he riffs cleverly on Cassie's cinematic history ("Gropes of Wrath," for example). But Palahniuk's play on movies and literature in the context of this novel perhaps points to an important question raised by the New York Times Book Review: "What the hell is going on? The country that produced Melville, Twain and James now venerates King, Crichton, Grisham, Sebold and Palahniuk."
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 11/22/2008)
Eldest
Christopher Paolini
Eldest (Inheritance)
The land of Alagaesia is suffering under the Empire of the wicked Galbatorix, and Eragon and his dragon Saphira, last of the Riders, are the only hope. But Eragon is young and has much to learn, and so he is sent off to the elven forest city of Ellesmera, where he and Saphira are tutored in magic, battle skills, and the ancient language by the wise former Rider Oromis and his elderly dragon Glaedr. Meanwhile, back at Carvahall, Eragon's home, his cousin Roran is the target of a siege by the hideous Ra'zac, and he must lead the villagers on a desperate escape over the mountains. The two narratives move toward a massive battle with the forces of Galbatorix, where Eragon learns a shocking secret about his parentage and commits himself to saving his people.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 11/22/2008)