“Little Brother” is the first complete novel by Cory Doctorow that I have read. Before this I have read the short story “When Sysadmins Ruled The World” and I follow him on Twitter and RSS as he has some very  interesting things to say on his blogs and in his column in the Guardian.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

From the author’s site:

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Review

Little Brother

This book doesn’t have the scope and depth of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in which the idea of Big Brother, a totalitarian surveillance state, is introduced. Little Brother is set in contemporary society, it is fast-paced and a more enjoyable read; it’s much more of a page-turner than “1984“.
How to describe this book? I will list just list some keywords and phrases: surveillance state, war on terror, Department of Homeland Security, hacking, freedom of speech, David against Goliath (in this case M1k3y against the DHS), coming of age, love story, totalitarianism, social media, teen techno-geek rebellion, and if you are a teen you might find some valuable career advice in there too. No kidding, read the afterwords by Bruce Schneier and Andrew Huang.

Cory Doctorow’s novels have been on my to read list for some time now, but after reading “Little Brother” they have been moved to the top of the list. I also put “Little Brother” on my to buy list because it is a book that I will certainly read again.
“Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow was published in 2008 and is freely available for download with the author’s and publisher’s permission. I mentioned at the start of this article that Cory Doctorow has interesting things to say, he does, especially about Digital Rights Management.

Rating:

• Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com
• Feedbooks | Food for the mind

“I Shall Wear Midnight” is the fourth book in the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett, which, in turn, is part of the larger discworld series. The first three books in the Tiffany Aching series are: “The Wee Free Men“, “A Hat Full Of Sky“, and “Wintersmith“. I recommend to read them in that order before starting on “I Shall Wear Midnight“.

I Shall Wear Midnight

Tiffany Aching is 16 and finished her training to become a witch, not just a witch but the witch of the Chalk, or hag o’ the hills as the Nac Mac Feegle would say. She does what witches do: doing her rounds, delivering babies, salving wounds, being there when people die, bandaging legs, taking pain away, and cutting old ladies’ toenails.

Then things start to go bad, an evil has awakened and with it come all the old stories, the stories about evil old witches. It starts with whispers, murmurs, and looks. Then someone picks up a stone. Before you know it they start looking for fire-wood. The evil has set its eyes on Tiffany. I don’t want to spoil the story, so I will just mention that Tiffany Aching ends up in Ankh-Morpork with a bunch of Nac Mac Feegles, meets a city witch and a legend, … before returning to the Chalk to face the evil on her own turf and on her own terms, and finds some unexpected allies.

These last couple of years some new elements have entered Terry Pratchett’s novels: sentiment, romance, drama, tragedy, and some novels have become darker, like this one. This came at the expense of what made the discworld series of comic fantasy novels so unique; a mix of great storytelling, wit, humor, satire, parody, and littered with puns, allusions and culture references. Those elements are not gone, but they are not as abundant as before.

It is a very good story, but it is not a very good traditional discworld story; the tumbling-down-the-rabbit-hole kind of fun has gone. I miss the shear joy, sarcasm, and wittiness of “Going Postal“, “The Wee Free Men“, “The Last Continent“, “Eric“, “Pyramids“, “Thief of Time“, …

Rating:

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Fanny Hill

I do not live in the USA, but freedom of speech and expression is equally important in the EU. Banned Books Week was brought to my attention via Twitter by some of my fellow tweeps.

My goal was to read books that are or once were banned. The books I read during the Banned Books Week of 2010 (September 25 – October 2) are:

1. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
2. Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland
3. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

Lady Chatterley’s Lover has been (temporarily) banned in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Japan, and India for violation of obscenity laws. The book starts good with the observations by Lady Chatterley of the discussions between her crippled husband and his guests on mind and body, relationships, intellect, classes, … Amusing at first, it becomes rather boring even during the first half of the book. Her longing for a child, her love affair, and her trip to Venice didn’t make me change my opinion. You don’t really get to know the characters and the book provides little context for the period just after the first world war in the UK, a period of which I know very little.

Fanny Hil or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was banned in the U.S.A in 1821 for obscenity, then again in 1963. First published in 1748 in England, it is considered the first pornography novel. It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history, and a synonym for obscenity. I am not familiar with the genre, but I think a better 21st century description would be an erotic novel. I think John Cleland deserves an award for writing a pornographic novel without ever using an obscene or vulgar word.
The story can be summarized as follows: once upon a time a young women went to the big city, to support herself she had to work as a woman of pleasure, she was very good at it and got rich, she found back her first love, and they lived long and happily ever after. It has all the ingredients of a fairy tale, but not one you will see on the Disney channel.
The characters, context and story are better than in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, making John Cleland a better writer than D.H. Lawrence in my opinion.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the most entertaining read of the three. The genre is called literary nonsense and the first chapters of the book were really promising. Alas, contrary to writers like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett who are able to maintain a high level of fun, entertainment, sarcasm, humor and wit throughout their books, Lewis Carrol can’t keep it up. The quality of the story varies between funny and boring, amusing and dull.
The book is/was (?) banned in the province of Hunan, China, beginning in 1931 for its portrayal of anthropomorphized animals acting on the same level of complexity as human beings. Duh?

Ratings:

for Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

for Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland

for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

All three books are freely available for download. I am looking forward to next year’s banned books week. On my shortlist are Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Resources

• Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read (ALA)
• Banned Books Week (Wikipedia)
• List of books banned by governments (Wikipedia)
• Feedbooks: A place to discover and publish e-books
• Project Gutenberg – Free eBooks

I participated in my first readathon last weekend. A readathon is an event during which people read books for a certain period of time. This can be to raise money for charity or just for fun. My first readathon was a read-your-own-books readathon, starting Friday morning and ending Monday morning. I managed to read 5 books between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening, but I cheated a little.

The readathon was organized by the Bibliophilic Book Blog and the word was spread via Goodreads.

The books I read were mostly pockets, with each having somewhere between 100 and 150 pages — this is the cheating I mentioned.
My books in reading order:

1. The Last Castle by Jack Vance
2. Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin
4. The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph by Jack Vance
5. Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching by Ralph Alan Dale

Before I started I thought that Ursula K. Le Guin‘s translation/interpretation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching would be better than Ralph Alan Dale‘s, but this was not the case. Ralph Alan Dale‘s book is a more modern interpretation of the 2500 year old verses, more accessible, easier to read and beautifully illustrated with black and white photographs to really get you into the mood. Doing a comparison on Tao Te Ching books could be an idea for yet another article as I already have read 4 of them.

I always wanted to read both The Last Castle by Jack Vance and Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin in a short period of time. The stories are very similar and so I thought, more than half a lifetime ago when I was a huge fan of Jack Vance, that Ursula K. Le Guin must have copied his work.
It was only more recently that I discovered that both books were published in 1966. So who copied who? Or is it possible that 2 very similar stories were published almost simultaneously. I now say that Ursula Le Guin is by far the better writer. Her writing and storytelling is better, her characters are more real and you get to know them, even her fighting and battle scenes are better written. But the comparison between both books will be the topic of a complete article.

The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph by Jack Vance is a combination of old school SciFi and detective story. A fun read.

Conclusion

This one weekend I read 5 books, which gave me inspiration for 3 articles, including this one. All in all a productive weekend. But the fifth book proved a bit too much, it felt more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.
Still, it was fun, devoting a weekend to reading. I am looking forward to doing it again, but not too often – a couple of times a year maybe.

I was in doubt whether to read this book or not. I don’t like religious fundamentalists, so would I like a book by an atheist fundamentalist any better?

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

This is Richard Dawkins’ impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly.

The Good

His arguments against religion, his appeal for a secular society and atheism, … are just brilliant. The way he picks the arguments in favor of a religion and the stories in holy books apart are eye openers and even hilarious on occasion. It will provide a lot of ammo next time you find yourself in a discussion on religion.
He also does a very good job pointing out how expressions by or quotes from famous scientists, writers, politicians, and even the founding fathers of the USA are used out of context to support the idea that they believed in a God. While his explanation is a lot better than those by theists, by putting those quotes into context, it is also a weak point because most of those people are dead, so you can’t ask them what they really meant by it. It’s his interpretation against those made by theists.
Another good point for this book is making connections; sometimes you read something in a book, and something else in another book, without making a connection. This book made me connect some dots. Some of the things the author wrote reminded me of funny quotes or witty remarks by Terry Pratchett. I am not saying that Richard Dawkins read Terry Pratchett‘s work or vice-versa. Both are well-read men and it’s likely they have read the same books. When I read the part on pedomorphism, it reminded me of the SF-novel Protector by Larry Niven. These are just 2 of the more enjoyable insights. I had many Aha-Erlebnis moments while reading this book.

The Bad

Richard Dawkins is a bit too fanatical to my liking in his atheism. This is probably why he got his nickname Darwin’s Rotweiller instead of just being called a Darwinist. The content is very good, but the tone was too aggressive. I recently listened to an interview with Dr Pamela Gay — a scientist, astronomer, writer and Christian — on Token Skeptic on the separation between scientific truth and belief. In it she said that when you want take action against religious fundamentalism, Creation theory, or Intelligent Design, you shouldn’t attack Christianity in general. Challenge the arguments by the fundamentalists, the creationist, … and you might even find Christian allies. Richard Dawkin‘s arguments are good, but he wont be finding allies among moderate believers for keeping creation theory or intelligent design (ID) out of the science lessons. He might end up only preaching to the choir. There is humor in the book which made me laugh, but why doesn’t he use it more.

This book proved to be a slow read. I didn’t expect a page-turner, but I also didn’t expect to have to work my way through it. It’s not like the topic is difficult. Was the problem mine — a lack of concentration? Is it the author’s writing style? Is it the Dutch translation?
It wouldn’t be the first time that I preferred to read the original English version of a book instead of the Dutch, my native tongue, translation. I would never have become the fan of Terry Pratchett I am today reading his books in Dutch. After reading the series “De Duivelsprinsen” I almost immediately sold my copies and bought the original English books, The Demon Princes by Jack Vance.

So, to those of you who have read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, either in Dutch or in English, was it a slow read, did you have to work your way through it, or was it a page-turner?

Conclusion

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is definitely a book that I am going to read again, but next time in English. The content is great, but I didn’t like his style that much. I did put his other books on my to read list.
Be prepared; the many references in this book made my to read list a whole lot longer.
Rating:

Resources

• Token Skeptic
• Photo: Wooden Leg by Mattox on stock.xchng

The Fuller Memorandum is the third book in the Laundry or Bob Howard series by Charles Stross. The series combines hard science-fiction, spy thriller, and Lovecraftian horror. The first two books are The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue.

The book starts very strong, with a prologue titled “Losing My Religion” by Bob Howard, the main protagonist in the series. In this he writes that he started out as an atheist, and wished he could go back to the comforting certainties of atheism, but the nature of his work for the Laundry, Her Majesty’s occult secret service, as a computational demonologist have made him a believer of the One True Religion.

The Truth is that my God is coming back.
When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun.
And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.

The story in this book takes place a couple years after The Jennifer Morgue, the second book in the series. Bob Howard is now the manager of the Laundry’s IT-department and married to Dominique “Mo” O’Brien. Like with any hard working couple work occasionally follows them home, but when work includes zombie assassins and minions of a mad god’s cult things are rapidly spinning out of control. On top of that his boss Angleton disappears and a top-secret dossier, the Fuller Memorandum, goes missing. What’s the connection and who or what is the Eater of Souls?

Rating:

I have some mixed feelings about this book. It’s still very good, but it’s not the same genre anymore as the first book in the series. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, the second book was already different from the first, but the differences weren’t as pronounced.
The first novel, The Atrocity Archives, is fast-paced, geeky, hard science-fiction with Lovecraftian horror and some elements from the archetypal British spy novel mixed with sarcasm, humor and satire. The third book, The Fuller Memorandum, is a Lovecraftian spy thriller. I don’t know if it can still be called science-fiction. A lot — but mind you not all — of the geekyness, wittiness, humor, satire and sarcasm have gone too. The characters have gained in depth and the storytelling has improved, but I liked the first novel of the series a lot more.

See my reviews on the The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue.

The Jennifer Morgue is the second book in the Laundry or Bob Howard series by Charles Stross. This review contains some minor spoilers.

Did you ever experience the feeling of being turned into a zombie while watching a PowerPoint presentation? Well, here it is for real, a PowerPoint presentation is used to turn people into zombies. After barely surviving this ordeal, Bob Howard, computer übergeek and demonology hacker extraordinaire in his Majesty’s occult secret service, must stop software billionaire Ellis Billington. Billington has managed to get his hand on a Soviet Cold War device that permits communication with the dead. He plans to use it to raise an eldritch horror, codenamed Jennifer Morgue, from the Stygian depths, in order to rule the world.

The Jennifer Morgue

The entire operation has been put under a specific geas by Ellis Billington, meaning that if the good guys want to win they have to play it by the rules of the archetypal British spy novel. So you have a huge yacht in the Caribbean, a very rich evil mastermind with a white cat, casinos, martinis (shaken, not stirred), and you also need a British secret agent. Don’t tell Bob, he’s not supposed to know.
And you’ve got to have girls — Bond girls. There is the gorgeous looking (at least glamor level 3) Ramona Random from the Black Chamber, who planted a demon on her in order to control her — not just any demon but a succubus. Every man she has ever slept with died horribly less than 24 hours later. Can she be trusted?  Is she even human? What will Bob’s girlfriend Dominique “Mo” O’Brien do? Lie back and think of England? Yeah right, when hell freezes over.
What is the role of the Laundry, Britain’s occult secret service? The Laundry wouldn’t be the Laundry if they played by the rules, at least to other people’s rules.

Rating:

Charles Stross did it again. This is the second book in the Laundry or Bob Howard series, where hard science fiction is mixed with the British spy novel and Lovecraftian horror, and spiced with humor, sarcasm and satire. Not as geeky, fast-paced and witty as the first novel in the series, The Atrocity Archives, but still very good.
Click here for my review of the first novel.

What do you get when you mix hard science fiction, a spy thriller, a loathing for bureaucracy, a computer hacker as main protagonist, Lovecraftian horror, a wicked sense of humor and set it all in an alternate history? Answer: The Bob Howard or Laundry series by Charles Stross.

This is a review of the first novel of the series: The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross.

The grinning sallow face of Fred from Accounting looms out of the darkness in front of me and I recoil before I realise that it’s all right — Fred’s been dead for more than a year, which is why he’s on the night shift.

The premise for the series is that certain mathematical computations, the Turing-Lovecraft Theorem, can be used to open gates to other dimensions and universes or summon demons and even worse things that, as Terry Pratchett puts it, even the dark is afraid of. Or you could use some candles, a human sacrifice, and some other stuff, but that’s old school.

The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics — computerised or otherwise — draws them forth. (And you thought running that fractal screensaver was good for your computer?)

The main protagonist is Bob Howard, a computer geek now working as a low-level techie for the Laundry, Britain’s super-secret, occult, government agency. As a student they caught him messing with stuff he shouldn’t have and offered him the choice to either work for the Laundry or … Well, it wasn’t much of choice anyway.

I thought I was just generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares.

The Atrocity Archives

After a while he gets bored and volunteers for active duty on Her Majesty’s Secret Occult Service, which is something he will regret several times during the novel when fighting zombies, Nazis, nameless horrors, and his line-manager.

Rating:

This is a special kind of fast-paced geeky science fiction that I had never encountered before. Take William Gibson’s cyberpunk, Terry Pratchett’s sarcasm and humor, Lovecraft’s horror, and Ian Fleming’s James Bond and this will give you most of the ingredients. I am not really a fan of Lovecraft, but in the mix served up by Charles Stross it is simply irresistible.
This is not going to be everyones cup of tea. You will either like it very much or not at all. Be prepared to read sentences like “Most of it boils down to the application of Kaluza-Klein theory in a Linde universe constrained by an information conservation rule. ” If this doesn’t put you off, you could be in for a treat.

Why write a review for a mediocre fantasy duology? Because the story reminded me of a much better fantasy trilogy I once read.

KingMaker, Kingbreaker

The titles of the 2 novels in this duology are:

1. The Innocent Mage
2. The Awakened Mage.

The second novel is sometimes referred to as Innocence Lost.

From the cover of the first novel The Innocent Mage:

Enter the kingdom of Lur, where to use magic unlawfully means death. The Doranen have ruled Lur with magic since arriving as refugees centuries ago. Theirs was a desperate flight to escape a powerful mage who started a bitter war in their homeland. To keep Lur safe, the native Olken inhabitants agreed to abandon their own magic. Magic is now forbidden them, and any who break this law are executed. Asher left his coastal village to make his fortune. Employed in the royal stables, he soon finds himself befriended by Prince Gar and given more money and power than he’d ever dreamed possible. But the Olken have a secret; a prophecy. The Innocent Mage will save Lur from destruction and members of The Circle have dedicated themselves to preserving Olken magic until this day arrives. Unbeknownst to Asher, he has been watched closely. As the Final Days approach, his life takes a new and unexpected turn …

From the cover of the second novel The Awakened Mage:

“The evil foretold has risen … and we are all that stands between it and the end.”
Asher has come a long way for a fisherman’s son. Together with his friend Prince Gar, he has defended their kingdom against its bitterest enemy, but at great cost.
Now, the evil mage Morg is preparing for his most deadly assault. Desperate, trapped in a broken body, Morg has little time and fewer scruples. And he has a plan.
As Gar and Asher unwittingly fall into a dangerous deception, Morg gets ever closer to his goal. And this victory would be particularly sweet, for who better to destroy the kingdom than the two who would give anything to save it?

Review

The Innocent Mage

Rating: 6/10 or
I would put these books in the category fast-food. Fast-food books are an entertaining read for a couple of hours (per book) or an evening or two. Don’t expect the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, though-provoking issues, sarcasm, witty remarks, or life-changing insights. I just wanted to spend some quiet evenings reading, nothing more and nothing less. These 2 books have served their purpose. After all, a bad book is still better than a good movie or TV series.
Karen Miller could use some help with her characters. Asher, the main protagonist is impatient, rude, bad-tempered and full of self-pity (what have I done to deserve this, why is everyone always picking on me). Not once did I feel any sympathy for him. Not once.

Why spend time writing a review for a mediocre fantasy duology? While reading these novels I got this feeling that I had read something similar before, but better. I kept hoping that it would come back to me, but it was only after I finished the second novel that I made the connection with a fantasy trilogy that I had read some years before.

The plot:

• 2 types of magic, one used by the nobility, the other used by outcasts who are hunted down and killed
• main protagonist swears absolute loyalty to his master, a prince and future king
• main protagonist discovers that he has magic too and uses it to help his master at great personal risk
• main protagonist makes few friends and lots of enemies
• main protagonist discovers that he has both kinds of magic
• main protagonist’s powers are discovered, he is hunted down, beaten, tortured, found guilty and (nearly) executed
• main protagonist is saved from death by a small group of loyal friends
• main protagonist saves the kingdom

The Awakened Mage

Where have I read this before? I am so glad that it came back to me and I immediately wanted to return to the library to get The Farseers Trilogy by Robin Hobb and reread it … again:

1. Assassin’s Apprentice
2. Royal Assassin
3. Assassin’s Quest

Robin Hobb is a far better writer than Karen Miller when it comes to storytelling, giving the characters depth, describing the landscape, …
Also by Robin Hobb in the same universe and with some of the same characters: The Liveship Traders Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy, Soldier Son Trilogy and The Rain Wild Chronicles.

PS: I have read the books in Dutch: De Onschuldige Magiër and De Magiër Ontwaakt. A story can be affected by the translation, but in this case I doubt I would have to make any changes to my review.

This is the first book of the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. This series is about a young girl who wants to become a witch and is part of the discworld series.

The Wee Free Men

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching, a young girl on the Chalk decides that she wants to become a witch. She gets the opportunity to prove herself when another world makes contact with hers. A dark, cold and parasitic world, and it’s ruler, the Queen of the Elves, kidnaps her little brother.
With a weapon (her mother’s frying pan), her granny’s magic book (Diseases of the Sheep) and the help of the Nac Mac Feegle (aka the Wee Free Men) the fighting’, thieving’, tiny blue-skinned pictsies who were thrown out of Fairyland for being drunk and disorderly, she is going to get steal her brother back.
What could possibly go wrong?
Guest appearances: Miss Tick, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.

Review:

Rating: 10/10 or
This is Terry Pratchett at his best. Witty, entertaining, hilarious and the book contains lots of references to contemporary society and other stories. Terry Pratchett is probably the only author that can make me laugh out loud while reading. The Scottish dialect of the Nac Mac Feegle slows down the pace of reading a bit, but even as a non-native English speaker I find it understandable and very funny.
In this book Terry Pratchett defines what separates witches from the common folk. Witches have First Sight, the ability to see what is really there, and Second Thoughts, the thoughts you think about the way you think. This could as well be the definition of a skeptic.

With over 30 discworld novels it is sometimes difficult to know where to get started. The first discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, is an obvious good choice, there are some more or less stand-alone novels like Pyramids and Small Gods, and there is the Tiffany Aching series. You don’t need any prior knowledge of the discworld series to enjoy this novel.  The Wee Free Men is the first in a series and is followed by A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith. A forth Tiffany Aching novel is in the making: I shall Wear Midnight.
This series is intended for young adults and teens which makes it more accessible than his other work. His books are so full of wisdom, sarcasm, and references to contemporary society, classic stories, movies, … that I sometimes have the impression that I am missing something. It is what makes rereading his books so much fun; each time I discover new references and puns.