Literature
I was pleasantly surprised to score 11/13 on this Famous First Lines Quiz. I had to take a couple educated guesses.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading on the trip so far. I managed to finish Speaker for the Dead, the Orson Scott Card sequel to Ender’s Game. It cleared up a lot of the issues I had with the first book (especially the bit about the computer game that seemed a little too sentient). My edition came with a nice introduction from Card that explained why the whole “Speaker for the Dead” thing at the end of Ender’s Game felt so tacked on. Basically, he wanted to write the second book but he needed to set up who Ender was and what humanity’s attitude would be towards the piggies. Now I almost wish he had spent more time on it. I’m enjoying the series so much that if I don’t get the next book soon, I’ll probably go back and reread the first two!
Max
July 3, 2003 — 10:15 am
Don’t forget to check out Ender’s Shadow (the “other sequel” to Ender’s Game).
Kris
July 3, 2003 — 1:50 pm
See, I’m confused as to the order of the books. My copy of Ender’s Game lists six in the series:
– Ender’s Game
– Speaker for the Dead
– Xenocide
– Children of the Mind
– Ender’s Shadow
– Shadow of the Hegemon
Is that the order I should be reading them in? It sounds like Xenocide should definitely be the continuation of Speaker for the Dead, which finished on a bit of a cliffhanger. Let me know if you’d recommend a different order…
(I’m trying to get Rodd to read them but I fear I’ve talked them up too much. It’s going to be like Harry Potter all over again and he’ll never read them.)
Max
July 4, 2003 — 3:26 am
The way I explain it to my students is that you basically have two narrative arcs to follow when you finish Ender’s Game. You can take the Speaker/Xenocide/Children arc which takes Ender way into the future, or you can take the Shadow/Hegemon arc which gives you some background on Bean, then tells some of the Battle School saga from his point of view (fascinating stuff), then moves back to earth for a more political conspiracy-type thing involving Peter and some Battle School vets. Both sides have their fans and detractors–I think the former path is more philosophicallly/ethically-oriented, whereas the latter is more straightforward action and intrigue. So decide what suits you better–there’s no narrative overlap in either arc.
Ron
July 5, 2003 — 2:05 pm
I was happy with 9 correct out of 13, and I made more than a couple educated guesses. But it was a fun quiz.