Book: Rendez-vous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke, 1973)
I am trying to get back into reading more books, and whenever I see a recommandation for a book from someone I follow or know, I tend to order it and read it right after.
This is what I did recently when Ted Gioia was discussing SF books in a post about 2001:A Space Odyssey: at the end of the article, he mentioned that folks who haven't read any book from Arthur C. Clarke should start with Rendezvous with Rama.
So I ordered it straight away, and received it a few days later.
I ordered the English version, as I like reading books in English (when they're from non-French writers).
Even though I like science fiction, there's a lot of books I didn't read - 2001 being one of them. So I was really eager to start reading Rendezvous.
Obviously, I won't be doing a review of that book, since it's not exactly a new one. Rather, I want to give my impressions and what I liked/didn't like.
The book is well written and very easy to get into - I was half expecting to
struggle grasping it, as I did with 2001 (even though I only saw the movie, and
I was really young).
The "English style" is also easy: I wasn't sure about how a
50 years old book would be written - granted, I knew that wouldn't be something
Shakespeare-style, with some tough old English, but that was not the case at
all.
What I especially liked in Rendez-vous with Rama is how clear Clarke's writing was: I could perfectly picture any scene he was describing - you could argue that it should be the case with any book, but that's not true, there are plenty of writers whose descriptions are not necessarily easy to "transform" into images in your brain.
The only thing I was a bit disappointed by, is the end of the book: you're left
to conclude by yourself what the ship was about.
Now, I say "disappointed", but again that's also the nice things about books:
making you think/imagine scenarios, and not giving the reader a too strong
direction. I kinda like it but at the same time it's a bit frustrating not
knowing what the whole thing was about :-)
Tags: Misc