I had great fun catching up on three of John Scalzi's stand-alone science fiction novels. All of them have danger, villains, and suspense along with generous dollops of humor and compassion.
Fuzzy Nation is an adaptation of H. Beam Piper's
Little Fuzzy, in which humans are deciding whether little critters found on a planet are sentient or not. I liked the original, but really like the way Scalzi updated it without destroying the essence of the story.
The
Kaiju Preservation Society is an ultra-secret government group who has discovered a parallel earth in which everything is deadly to humans. We learn about the ecosystem and the monsters who inhabit it through a new recruit.
The Android's Dream deals with sheep, especially a breed that is very important to members of an alien race with which humans have diplomatic connections. The plot twists and turns as the government attempts to prevent a war by producing one of these sheep for a special ceremony. Meanwhile another group tries to thwart their attempts.
For a change of pace, I'm reading
The Shrine, the newest mystery in Lesley Thomson's Detective's Daughter series. Stella, the practical crime-solving cleaner, is having trouble understanding her partner Jack's obsession with trying to contact his dead mother through a medium. They've had words about it, so Stella decides to give herself a holiday with her DI friend Toni. This is where I am after the first 50-some pages. I'm sure there will be at least one crime to solve, so I'll get further into it over the weekend.
In the meantime, I've continued to cull books to donate to friends or Goodwill, and I've spent the past few days shifting my collection around to accommodate a bunch of new ones I couldn't resist. I've been eyeing a new bookcase I like but am resisting the temptation until I see if those I have will be enough. I have to remind myself that it's not hoarding if it's books, unless they start falling on my head!
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