Tremick's Best Reads of 2008

The second part of my tradition: A top-5 list of the books I read this year.

Number 5:
Rendezvous With Rama, Arthur C. Clarke.
A mysterious alien object enters the solar system, heading for the sun, and a spaceship crew goes to investigate. Have they come to take over, to co-habitate, or just passing through? The crew encounters a huge, cylindrical object large enough to fit an entire ecosystem around its inner surface. The crew explores its mysterious wonders as solar system politics and the vessel itself heat up; they learn only enough to baffle and intrigue before the vessel moves on.

There were a number that could have tied for number five, but I loved the feeling of mystery and awe in the unknown this book engendered. You end up feeling like the crew investigating: wishing you had more time to uncover all of Rama's secrets and intentions. Clarke's imagination for scientific detail is unsurpassed.

Number 4:
Ringworld, Larry Niven.
A three-legged alien, a giant war-like cat-like alien, a human bred for luck, and a human centuries old strike out on an expedition to explore an astronomical ring constructed around a star with a habitable surface built on the inside. The surface area of the ring, around and from edge-to-edge, is unfathomable. Yet advanced civilization has disappeared. What happened? The adventure to and on the ring is an Odyssey of mishap and surprise.

This book was a pleasant surprise. I had heard about it and the praise it received, but I thought it might just be a technical exploration of this ring. It turned out so much more. The ring itself is a wonder to experience through the writing, the characters are well formed and humorous caricatures of themselves, and there is a Douglas-Adamsesque irony that nonetheless stays within the realms of sanity. The book is as much about the characters as their environment, the plot is ever interesting, and the result is an excellent adventure.

Number 3:
Seventh Son, Orson Scott Card.
A boy is born the seventh living son of a seventh son, and the thirteenth child born. As legend has it, a child born with these numbers will have powers over the world around him. In this alternate-reality colonial America, legends are real. As seventh son Alvin Miller Junior grows, accidents follow but mysterious events save him every time. Alvin's destiny is to become a Maker, one with the power to create from the elements, the antithesis to the force that has been trying to kill him all along: The Unmaker. Alvin must learn to use and respect his own power to protect himself and others from the power of Unmaking.

This book is a story of characters, of magical forces greater than us all, and a statement about the powers of man and nature, the fight against making and unmaking. I admit, I'm a sucker for stories about children trying to overcome adversity, as I see my own youth in their stories. Card's stories include cruelty but also great tenderness, and Alvin experiences both. The clincher for me was a scene near the end between father and son that brought tears to my eyes. I was entranced by the idea of a world we know so well through history and yet unlike anything we've ever known, with supernatural forces at work all around, and people with their own magical knacks. Yet I can almost feel the magic he writes about around me, as if maybe it is there but lost beneath our concrete. This is an intriguing and touching beginning to the Tales of Alvin Maker.

Number 2:
Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card.
After unknowingly destroying an entire alien species in a game allegedly to save humanity, Ender Wiggin, genius commander at the age of 12, is exiled from Earth. Instead, he embarks on an adventure through space to the first human colony and beyond, using his skill and his intellect to overcome those who would manipulate him. And yet, no matter where he goes, the guilt of his crime and the search for redemption go with him.

My thoughts are exhausted in the review further down, but the characters are so rich, the emotion so strong, and the events so momentous (and, indeed, my connection to the story so strong already) that it easily became my second-best read of 2008.

Number 1:
The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
In a post-apocalyptic world, a father and his son try to survive as they travel to a somewhere, hopeful, better world that may not even exist. On the road, they must avoid all those who have abandoned humanity, who see them as nothing more than food.

It's hard to describe the power of this book in words; you really must read it. This is one of, if not THE, most devastating & depressing, suspenseful, tender, hopeless and yet hopeful book I've ever read. In a way, the story is quite simple. You don't even know the characters' names, much about their past, what happened to the world and why, and there isn't a quotation mark in it despite the simple yet poignant dialogue. And yet, all together, between and beyond the lines, it is profound. The writing is precise and yet conveys a vivid environment that might have taken other authors paragraphs to present. The entire trip is an existential adventure with characters desperate for relief but destined, always, to the road. Like our own lives, our own roads with their slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, who knows where it leads or where it ends; all we know is that it just goes on, that it has to just go on.