The youngest’s final book of the year in English is George Orwell’s 1984. The teacher behaved herself and drew no parallels to current events in the classroom, however, she did ask students to do so in their final paper.

It’s been many years since I read 1984 - and I read it at the same time as Animal Farm, which obviously differs as it’s about the animals. Duh! Still, the themes blur a bit.

I’m not nearly so well behaved as the teacher.

The core concept of 1984 is “doublethink”. Per Wikipedia, it’s “a form of trained, willful intellectual blindness to contradictions in a belief system.” Patriot Act anyone? Waterboarding is not torture? And Guantanamo Bay detainees are not subject to the constraints of the Geneva conventions?

The protagonist of the story, Winston Smith, works for the “Ministry of Truth”, which rewrites history to serve the contemporaneous party line. Oops, there were no weapons of mass destruction. And disbarred ex-president Clinton was the most wonderful leader since JFK.

The novel unwinds against a backdrop of a perpetual war – perhaps generated by the ruling party itself. Enough said.

I think I’ll re-read the book – it might provide more insight than newspaper reports of current events.

Many of us are book-lovers… shoot, that’s why we like Scalzi & his site!

What is the most striking book you’ve read in the last year or so, and why? And for extra bonus points, if you’re a writer wannabe like me, which writer’s style do you most admire?

I read so fast and so voraciously, it’s hard to remember very far back — but I think the most striking recent book I’ve read was Dust, by Elizabeth Bear. While I’d love to be able to write like Connie Willis, my style doesn’t really go that direction; I’d say that a better target for me is Kristine Smith.

A discussion in Janiece’s blog yesterday on meeting online friends brought to mind a classic SF novel.

The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov, postulates a world, Solaria, where face-to-face human contact has become a thing of the past. Residents live singly on huge estates, surrounded by technology and thousands of robots, and interact with their fellow humans only via telepresence.

The story is a murder mystery, solved by a human detective partnered with a humanoid robot. The taboo against face-to-face contact is so strong that one of the characters commits suicide rather than have a forced physical encounter with another human (who, ironically, is the humanoid robot).

It made me think – there are some science fiction visions of the future that are within the realm of possibility, given our environment today. (Isn’t that the nature of SF – creating plausible futures?) But some seem more probable, even start to seem eerily similar, as our culture changes and grows.

Gregariousness and technology adoption are both broad spectrums. Some folks spend all their time at busy brick-and-mortar workplaces, out and about with friends and family, involved in athletics, living in the real world. Others work at home in virtual offices, order their food & clothing online and have it delivered, work out at home, and for them, getting out is a rare occasion. It’s a generalization, but the folks at the out-and-about end of the spectrum tend to not spend a lot of time online; the folks at the other end spend a great deal of time online, and their computer screen becomes a window to their work, their daily practical logistics and their social life.

As a virtual office worker, I’ve become more reclusive, tending toward that latter end of the spectrum. I can see how it would be easy for a technologically oriented society to continue the trend toward isolation with a virtual interface to the world.

While I believe that online activities and friendships are valuable and rewarding, I really don’t want to become a geek-hermit. I need to get out of the house, do hands-on activities, and spend time with real-life friends and family more often.

I don’t think I want to visit Solaria, even as a tourist.

At the airport on Sunday, I picked up The Road, a noted novel by author Cormac McCarthy.

The Road is about a father and a son wandering through the bleak landscape of post-apocalyptic, nuclear winter America. They are headed for the coast, seeking warmer weather. The world is destroyed, the sun is gone, the few humans left are savage and desperate.

I have been interested in reading it since it came out, but have never picked it up because of its grim and gloomy subject matter. I also read one of his previous novels, All the Pretty Horses, and found it to be a pretty depressing book.

I was absolutely blown away by Cormac McCarthy’s writing. The writing is like a book length prose poem, beautiful, haunting and exquisitely sad. The man is a master of the English language, using the rhythm of unconventional grammar and beautiful words like an artist.

It’s not an action novel, nor even really a SF work. While there are fearful moments, and glimpses of absolutely horrific images, it’s not action-oriented nor suspenseful. It’s literature, an examination of abiding love in the face of unimaginable despair.

After I finished it, I felt a deep quiet, a need for time to reflect. McCarthy’s words will stay with me for a very long time.

Friday night, author Ann Lamott was in town talking about her newest collection of essays, Grace Eventually (Thoughts on Faith). Her presentation was a part of the Seattle Spiritual Synthesis Series, put on by Elliott Bay Books and host Seattle First Baptist Church.

My lovely, wise sister Cheri and irrepressible blog queen Holy met me there, and we perched on the edge of our seats, eager to suck in all Ann might have to say. The venue - a beautiful, ancient, huge downtown church - was full to overflowing, including a good number of men. (Ann writes, among other things, about motherhood, menopause and body image, so the significant male fan base surprised me.)

Ann did not disappoint! Although she was speaking to perhaps 800 people, her demeanor was that of a wise, funny friend across the kitchen table, over coffee and illicit cookies. Her verbal voice was just like her written one - which speaks to her integrity - warm, humorous, rambling, insightful and loving.

Do I agree with everything Ann writes? No. She’s a very unconventional Christian and her views lean so far left she could fall over in a windstorm. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying her writing and learning from her faith.

She’s not shy about tackling highly controversial topics in surprising ways. One of the pieces she read during her talk was her short, loving, but surprisingly un-melodramatic account of a friend’s assisted suicide. She wove the fear, love, faith and pain she and the family of the dying man felt into the story, but completely sidestepped theology, politics and ethics. It made me cry when I read it because it was such a simple and honest story.

She dispensed advice on writing. “Whether or not the inspiration strikes, just do it. Be disciplined about it. Just like a diet, don’t start a first draft on a Thursday afternoon.” She told stories from her life, home and travels, and read pieces from her book. She closed with questions and answers, and was very willing to respond patiently to anything.

She signed books afterward, but none of us stuck around in that long queue. Having a book signed doesn’t mean much to me… making the 9pm ferry meant more.

I’m glad we went. Ann talked about the mid-70s ethic of working for the common good - it’s not much mentioned any more, and it’s one of the reasons she writes. I’m inspired to keep stringing words together as well for many of the same reasons.