Musings of a Loquacious Mind

What I'm Reading...

So I'm reading the Michael Chrichton book, Timeline. (By the way, all of the images are from and links to Amazon.com) My mom had bought a big bag of books for my dad, and he already had this one, so I thought "Why not? I wasn't much for Congo, but Jurassic Park was ok, before they made the movie, and even then, Jeff Goldblum did a pretty good job in his role."

(Even to myself I am a rambler. I actually shortened this "quick" thought by a good paragraph.)

Basically, a group of people go back to the High Middle Ages (1367). Or at least in theory, since I'm almost 200 pages and no Middle Ages action going on. And I say back, but I'm simplifying the whole process they claim. I will say this - my mind was much more willing to understand the cloning of dinosaurs from DNA found in petrified mosquitoes (and even the subsequent spontaneous gender-changes) of Jurassic Park than it is taking to the whole ideas of quantum physics at this level and level of fictionalization.

At any rate, it keeps making me think of other books I should really reread. A Wrinkle in Time, for one. Heck, the whole series. I've read A Wrinkle in Time dozens of times, but I know I have only read A Swiftly Tilting Planet, A Wind in the Door, An Acceptable Time and a few others once or a few times each. There are others I haven't read at all, and I really would like to. I never really completely wrapped my mind around a tesseract - oh, I could fold up my skirt hem and let an ant walk across it, whoopdiedo, but it just felt too fake (not like Back to the Future - that's clearly how time travel works. Deloreon optional.)

Then I started thinking about another YA novel of the same feel, Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes. Have you read this one? It's set at an indetermined time in the future, and these kids think they're being invited to play a VR game to get their minds off of being jobless, but really they're preparing to be dropped of on an alien planet. It's actually less weird than that sounds. It would be a quick little read - good for the beach. I should try to rummage up a copy.

Then there's John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy. I read this one in sixth grade. I assume it tied in to the Middle Ages, because everything in sixth grade tied into the Middle Ages. We even had this big end of year banquet in period dress (kind of) for our parents. Although I have a vague recollection that they found an old subway (transit form, not sandwich shop) and tins of food and that it, too, was set in the future, but made to look like the past. And at a certain age they got brain control caps put on. Wow. I have read some really weird books! Actually, I looked it up. As a class we just read The White Mountains, but I really think I read more than that, but I can't remember any of what happened. We also had to learn the Shelley poem "Ozymandius", which I have always thought had something to do with the book, but I honestly can't tell you why I think that. Was it in it? I remember liking it enough to look up the other books, but I don't think this is high on my reread list, unless a copy falls into my lap.

Another book this novel has reminded me of - one that I do want to pull back out and reread - is A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur's Court. You know, the book by Mark Twain? OK, maybe you saw any one of the movies based on it; besides the obvious ones of the same title there were A Kid in King Arthur's Court and Martin Lawrence's Black Knight (I saw the former, I passed on the latter). I think this one was still the funniest (and meant to be funniest) of all of them.

At any rate, this started out as a quick post, and now I have even more on my list! And now I'm thinking of time-travel-esq movies (Bill & Ted's, anyone?), so I really had better go just fix dinner!

Edited to add: After starting dinner, I checked out the whole Wikipedia page on "Ozymandius", and found this:

The trilogy of novels The Tripods, set in a post-apocalyptic world where people live a 17th-century existence among the ruins of the 20th century, an insane character claims his name is Ozymandias, and asserts, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." The protagonist, Will, remembers reading the name in a poem.

So I'm not crazy! It did tie together!

Edited AGAIN to add, this book ("Timeline") is also, apparently, a movie. My sister-in-law was telling me she saw it and it had Paul Walker in it. I don't know who he is. Her examples to me did not help. Seriously, Kris, The Fast and the Furious? But I checked it out on IMDb and Ethan Embrey is in it. You should have gone with him! OK, he's ninth in the listings, and even on page 184 I know he's not a major character, but he's the name I recognize from the list. Did this really come to theaters? And that would have been when I was actually going to movies - quite a bit! - so I would have thought I would remember it. Ah, well.

Labels: books

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