Ender's Game

I started reading Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, a few days ago, because one of the writers over at cracked.com mentioned it. He made the book sound like it was an essential read for adolescents, and even though I'm nearing 30, I haven't been able to get into many books appropriate for my age lately. I LOVED Twilight, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series, but the book club book (Called Back To Memphis) was boring, Loving Frank--also boring. and A Hundred Years of Solitude seemed interesting, but I couldn't manage to get past the first few chapters. I'm hoping maybe Ender's Game will get some of them juvenile shit out of my system and I can move on to what all the other 30 yr old women are reading: Oprah's books, and I can go back to at least pretending I'm a grown-up.

I spent an entire WEEK on Loving Frank, and never made it more than 50 pages in, but I've been on Ender's Game for 2 days and I'm halfway through. It's sci-fi, which usually doesn't interest me, but it's also about an outcast, who's special, which is totally what every nerd believed themselves to be in school (whilst being bullied and whatnot). I have said that Twilight speaks to my inner little 14 yr old lovestruck girl, and now here's Ender, appealing to my inner little outcast dweeb.

One thing that really surprises me about Ender is how advanced the book is: the characters have "desktops" which are essentially laptops BUT THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1977. They have something they call "the nets", that they access with the desktops, where they can read articles, post articles, join or watch debates, and they even have videos on them. Sound familiar? Again, this book was written in 1977! I know they had computers then, I know they had an internet then, but I'm awed by the author's description of what is now our internet. Oh, and Ender plays a computer game that reminds me so much of any game we have now where you play a character who walks around a little world and does stuff. Were there computer games in 1977? Maybe the author was basing this on D&D and he just knew that this whole computer thing was going to take off one day and eventually D&D would make it there.

Because this is an old book, and I have a tiny library, I had to get it on interlibrary loan. I'm pretty sure my librarian said this was the only book in the series she could find, which means if it stays as good as it has been so far, I will be scraping together my meager finances to purchase the rest of them. I bet Amazon will have some used copies, which is good because although I love the book, I'm not too crazy about the author, thanks to: http://laist.com/2008/08/01/orson_scott_card_scifi_writer_will.php