Between school and every other thing I generally complain about I haven’t had all that much time to read. So when I finally got some vacation time I grabbed at the chance and read quite a few books of which I want to tell you.
I’m doing this is order in which I read the books so…

We’ll start at Airman.
The thing that hit me about this book was the amount of beautiful words it contained. These are all words that most people would understand but that you don’t see all that often. Most books contain one or two of these beautiful words but in Airman they were everywhere and written so naturally that they didn’t strain the reading experience. In fact I wouldn’t have been able to place what was so great about the book if I hadn’t read some of it out loud to my brother.
More than this the settings in the book are so vivid I could see it, feel it, and taste it. Most importantly the setting wasn’t exactly like every other book’s setting.
What is this book about?
So this book is about young Connor Broekhart who was born flying. He grows to become a hero but in a turn of events he loses everything he holds dear and thrown into prison as a traitor to the king he had served and loved. To survive this prison known as little Saltee he is forced to leave behind his very heroic nature (captain America syndrome) and become the criminal everyone saw him as. Because of his extensive knowledge in aerodynamics the idea of flight is on his mind and forms a large and twisty part in the book.

I really loved how they played with his identity and how despite everything he went through not once was it pretended that any of his trails where light or didn’t matter. If anything some things where a little over dramatic but until I’m wrongfully thrown in prison and tortured I wouldn’t be able to verify this.

Next I read the first Ender’s game.
I loved this book.
It’s one of those books that when you read it you can feel it becoming a part of you. I’ve heard some people complain that little kids can’t rationally think like this but to those people I have the question of “why not?”
The book was well written and left my heart sore for Ender’s part.
It opened my head to galaxy’s worth of questions and thoughts while at the same time kept things interesting. I think the topic of the book was well looked at and Orson Scott Card came at it from an interesting angle.

The story is about Ender, a six year old who was born for the purpose of joining the military and fight off the enemy named buggers.
The book shows his journey through battle school and how he overcomes challenges and grows with each one.
I’m paraphrasing here but, at the end of the book there is written something like the moment you know your enemy well enough to destroy them you also know them so well that you cannot help but love them. I think this was not only portrayed with Enders relationship with the buggers but also in the relationship between him and those in charge of preparing him for the war. They completely break him but also can’t help but love him.
(sorry if that was like major spoiler but seriously go read this book)

After Ender’s game I read a little light YA book called “how to turn a boy into a pet.”
First let me tell you that while this book was amusing the most amusing thing about it was reading it in front of my boyfriend.
So in this book Circe Shaw starts a blog so she can practice journalling. It’s actually pretty cool because each chapter is a blog post.
Now as I already said this book was amusing and while not my normal kind of book I still enjoyed it because it was light and warm. The book is written in a very strong teenage voice and played well with how the Circe saw herself.
This book wasn’t very deep but I’m going to be truly honest with you, combined with the holiday I was on it was this book that got me of my writing slump.
The pure idea of how this Circe shared her life in her writing made me think about what I was doing in my own writing. It made me realize that I have forced my writing to be stiff.
Okay so what I just said is irrelevant to the quality of the book so let me continue.
Circe Shaw’s journey to become a fabulously sophisticated journalist mixed with her want for a boyfriend made for an amusing light hearted book. It’s a little shallow as my mother would say, so if you are used to reading things such as poetry or Ender’s game then this book will probably annoy you a little.
If on the other hand you are a teen girl or a young woman who simply want to take a amusing and relaxing break then read this books, it really nice and not to be shied away from.

Who can guess what I read after “how to turn a boy into a pet?”
That’s right, “speaker for the dead.”
To those of you who don’t know, speaker for the dead is the follow up for Ender’s game. You already heard me gush about Ender’s game so would you believe me when I tell you it lived up to my ridiculously high expectations?
It did!
Speaker for the dead, just like Ender before it, became a part of how I look at the world. Once again beautifully written and a great way of looking at the theme.
One of the first things I immediately need to gush about is how well it showed the idea of space travel. Unlike in most si-fi the space travel isn’t something to be taken lightly and if you travel far enough you get pulled out of your time so you basically lose everything you love.
The second thing I need to mention is how well it showed what Ender had done with his life since the last book. How he had chosen a different name so he could right his past sins and how he basically made a living out of both pulling apart and putting back together people’s lives.
Te last thing I want to gush about here is what they say about changing people’s view of each other. To save the alien species they encountered they have to change the people’s view so it isn’t us against them but instead all of us together in one group.

Now I need to still read the next one so I can’t tell you just yet where my head is running with that thought aside from the very obvious race issues in this world.

The last book I read on my vacation was Gulstruck Island.
This book is full of well constructed and playful sentences so the writing itself looks like a work of art.
Despite this the story is still good especially the world building.
The story is about a young girl whose job her entire life long was to protect her older much more important sister. Even her name, Hathin, is an imitation of the sound of dust falling. So Hathin is nothing more than a servant, always overlooked and never celebrated. Until you realize that she’s the most important one of the two sisters and the story moves on to tell you how she went and did miracles in the name of the sister. The story shows how she changes lives and shakes mountains only to let herself be forgotten about in the end.
As I already said the world building is amazing and I am totally caught by the idea of a race that always smiles. The bounty hunter who uses ash for magic only to be forced to hide from the rain was perfect for me.
Really if you feel like exploring a well crafted world then this is the right book for you.
So those where my hopefully not to full of spoiler thoughts on the books I read this vacation.
I know I’m not good at writing about other people’s writing since I suck at analysing and I really don’t like saying other people’s work bad but that’s not going to stop me from creating posts like this again.
I really suggest you read these books especially Ender’s game and Speaker for the dead since those are life changing books that you simply need to read.

So go now, pick up one of those books and read it. Or if you have already read one of these books then feel free to gush about it in the comments.