A book I don’t want to end
July 29, 2004Sometimes you read a book that you can’t put down. It grabs you and makes you want to finish it as soon as possible. Those are the really good books. I think the last book I read like that was A Storm of Swords.
But every once in a while I’ve come across books so superb I have the exact opposite reaction–I don’t want to finish them because then the book will be over. There will be no more pages to turn, no more words to savor. Those are really rare, in fact until last week there had been only two books that fell into that category for me–Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
Now I can add one more book to that list–Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang. A fabulous collection of short stories from one of the most important new voices writing science fiction. I’m of course not finished with the book yet, I’m trying to savor the moment as I read each story.
What sets Stories of Your Life and Others apart is that the stories are so imaginative. I especially like the longer story that gives this collection its name, “The Story of Your Life”. It’s about an alien race that thinks temporally, not in the linear cause-and-effect way we think. A very remarkable idea and one Ted Chiang pulls off quite well. It’s clear Chiang has a physics and mathematical background, as so many of the stories delve deep into that realm.
Really great read so far, definitely the best thing I’ve read in a long while.