Book Club Time!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Today's Discussion Question:

Show of hands, people. Did anyone else here besides me just not like Ender's Game? I'm not talking about the prevalent opinion of "Love the book. Shame about the author's raging douchenozzlery," which is a totally fair opinion to have. I'm talking about just being ragingly, compulsively unimpressed by the book itself.

I read it back in junior high, see. I think it was before I knew that Orson Scott Motherfucking Card was an unmitigated jackass, but I can't be entirely sure, since he's also a big source of pride for Utah and for a while he wrote a column for the Deseret News, the conservative Mormon paper around here.* I do recall getting a sense that he was a jerk from the book, but a poll of my classmates (we read it for class--Utah pride, remember) told me that nobody else got that sense,** and I've met a lot of cool folks since then who also didn't get that vibe.

But anyway, the upshot is that Ender's Game has always left me cold. I did not like or care about the characters. I did not really care about their fear of aliens, or their Battle Room strategies, or the kids' petty squabbles, or Val and Peter's Blogging For Change campaign. I spotted the twists before they happened and just thought the fact that Ender didn't made him seem kind of dim. The only thing I really liked was the revelation of the buggers' Oh Shit Moment when they realized they'd made a grievous assumption--and that was mostly an aside.

I know a lot of folks love it--pretty much everyone I talk to. So I'm just wondering--did anybody else have this response? Or was it just me?


*I'm not sure if he still does; frankly, I don't feel like looking it up.

**This doesn't prove anything, though, since some years later in high school only a select few of my classmates picked up on the fact that the chapter in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend in which the terrifyingly intense creepy stalker dude confesses to the hapless object of his desires that he is pretty literally crazy for her and he wants--and DESERVES!--to live inside her skin and breathe her breaths or somesuch was not supposed to be SWOONINGLY ROMANTIC. In retrospect, that discussion was a pretty good predictor of the success of Twilight.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

Sadly, I had not read it before I found out about the author, and so could not be counted on to form an honest opinion. I also suspect that it's one of those books best read when one is young and smart and feels misunderstood by their peers.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Been probably almost 15 years since I read it, but I remember enjoying it. No idea if I'd have a different opinion if I reread it now, but seeing as I have almost the whole series sitting on my bookshelf that's something I could investigate easily enough.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

The first OSC book I read was his book on writing. In it, he talks at one point about how all of these teenagers who were Clever Children read Ender's Game and told him how perfectly it captured their own experiences in a way no other book ever had. So when I read EG, it was with that in mind: that it was supposed to be amazingly insightful to my experience as a Clever Child.

And, well. I rather enjoyed most of it, though I hated how he handled the female characters. But it wasn't insightful at all. It was nothing like my experience. None of the children acted like any children I had ever known. (I had a sheltered upbringing.) So I sat around thinking, am I just not as clever as I thought? What am I missing that all these other people got out of the book? Of course, it was possible that the author just wasn't very good at assessing his own books, since he'd talked about not liking English teachers finding Symbolism in things, so he'd written EG without any, and by god, any student forced to find symbolism in there would know it really didn't exist! Which was ludicrous, because there is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS symbolism all over the place in that book.

Then I read the sequel and didn't really like it, and sort of shrugged off the series.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I was sort of meh.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I got the vague sense when I read it that anyone who wrote that smugly about a cast of such incredible jerks couldn't really be someone that I'd enjoy hanging out with. The setting interested me more than the characters and the plot, actually. That happens sometimes.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Never read it in my youth, and what I've learned about the author since hasn't compelled me to. L2S for OSC.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, and thanks to having the ending spoiled many years ago have never been inclined to. What I know of the characters' personalities has always seemed appropriate for the circumstances of their upbringing. I never thought that any of them was meant to be a role model.

[sunshine-shaman.livejournal.com]

I was sort of meh toward it. I like it for two things: helping me find some other sci fi books that are actually awesome, and I do think the battle room gravity flip was a pretty cool moment.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Nah, I couldn't deal with 'Ender's Game' either, long long before I learned Card's real deal. I still don't get all the appeal of the series.

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

I have never read it, actually. I picked it up in libraries a few times, but always put it back again because after reading the blurb I just did not expect I'd be that interested in the characters or the plot if I were to read it. I think I'll happily go the rest of my life without reading it, frankly.

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

I wasn't impressed, either. I have two friends who are dying of joy that it's being made into a movie, because they LOVE the book. I can't even tell them I don't like it, because then I have to hear about everything I should love about it. And, I don't love those things. I found it clumsily written, I didn't agree with the themes, and it seemed pointless.

[ishyface.livejournal.com]

I found it pretty unremarkable as well. How Ender didn't see that shit coming was always a mystery to me. Also, Peter's villainy was way too over the top.

[the-jackalope.livejournal.com]

I read a few of Card's other novels before I ever read Ender's Game. At the time I was a 'read everything I can get my hands on' type of kid, so if there was an unread book in our house I read it. My dad had a few of Card's novels, and so of course I read them. Every single one of them left a bad taste in my mouth, and while I think I skimmed most of Ender's Game, it wasn't really different as far as that goes.