Foolish Oats

A few weeks ago I went with fellow book lovers (Susheela, ~supersushipizza, and Gina, ~anawkwardreader) to the Toronto WORD ON THE STREET Book Fair! Check out the footage, thoughts, and delightful book haul from the gloriously chilly day. 

On the brink of Chapter 7. We were introduced to the games, which means we're moving on from character development and diving quickly into the battlefield. Greg and I are reading this together (it is one of his favourite books) and the last chapter was my turn to read aloud. I cannot help but be underwhelmed by the lack of imagination in Card's prose. The story is clearly a great invention, and the ways in which he described Ender's first experience without gravity had potential. It's reminiscent of the glossy action movies that have tremendous plot and a fine-tuned architect navigating the vibrant story. But, thus far, the prose is lacking. There have been hints at Card's potential, but as it stands everything Ender suffers through is documented quite literally. Perhaps there is just no room for poetry in Battle School. 

For the first fifty-odd pages, I was underwhelmed by Bradbury's words. The stories were jagged and inconsistent to one another, the flow of the pages choppy and rough. As the chronicles progressed, however, I began to see Bradbury's talent under new light. Stories built slowly upon one another, and became meditative and reflective. His ability to critique the social and political unrest of the 1950s as a detached and futuristic problem became clear. Setting the stories to begin in the late 1990s, and spanning into the 2020s, it was as if watching the ominous future of Earth for myself. The story begins with a focus on Mars, and the Martian race that inhabits the red, exotic planet. This focus shifts, as it was bound to do, to the pigheaded colonization of Mars by its earthly visitors. Though this was a somewhat predictable shift, it was unfortunate nonetheless. Within a few stories the entire Martian race became a thing of the past, an incomprehensible myth for the human settlers. How disheartening to see our race continuously portrayed as frightened, misguided bigots.