A new love

Who has odd reading habits?

Whenever I start a new book I always read the last sentence or even page sometimes. I try to read just enough to get an idea of the writer’s style and the feeling of the book. I don’t want to know what happens but I want to know if there is going to be reflection, cliffhanging, or perfectly wrapping up at the end of the story. On occasion I’ve “accidently” found out someone died and I chastise myself for ruining some of the story.

In magazines I always read them from back to front. The last page in magazines is usually a fun, frivolous thing to read and then I go from there. I hate weeding through pages upon pages of ads at the beginning!

So I’ve found a new author I’m nuts over. Last time I wrote I was just getting into Titan by Ben Bova. I’ve finished that. It was good, I’d give it 3.5 stars. He gives very strong, wonderful science to his stories, but the characters fall a little short. They come across as very 2-dimensional and obvious. So I moved on to another of his Grand Tour books called Jupiter.

I have found another new favorite book. Again the characters and relationships were a bit lacking. But Oh God, the science fiction left my heart swelled and my eyes glazed. The main character, Grant, has just finished college and is going into the mandatory public service. He is assigned to the science station at Jupiter. There he finds out that a select group of scientists are planning trips down into Jupiter. They have recordings of what may be intelligent life, far below the gassy surface. For a person that thinks the greatest scientific discovery would be intelligent aliens, this was a book I would clasp to my bosom and sigh and swoon over for hours.