Foundation and Empire / Isaac Asimov
Somehow, despite being a sci-fi advocate and having a desire to read a great deal of "classic" science fiction, I had never read anything by Isaac Asimov until a friend of mine said "I will not let you suggest any books to me until you read Foundation" so of course I read it and of course I loved it and of course it took me ages to acquire and read the second one, Foundation and Empire, which I also love. Run-on sentence, wow.
The Foundation series centers around, surprise surprise, The Foundation. It was put in place by Hari Seldon, a master of psychohistory (which is not history gone crazy, but rather a study of history boiled down to, essentially, pure mathematics which allowed Hari Seldon to predict the future of society at large (already awesome, I know)) so that instead of being 30,000 years of barbarism after the fall of the Galactic Empire, there would be a mere 1,000, as long as The Foundation successfully navigated its way around each so-called Seldon Crisis. Foundation and Empire contains the fourth and fifth Seldon Crisis, and it is very good.
The Remains of the Day / Kazuo Ishiguro
I read someone's review and they said that The Remains of the Day is an "anti-haiku", and I don't know if there is a better way to put it. This book unfolds perfectly and slowly, and I am at a loss about how to convey how truly lovely and truly heart-wrenching it is. It is a book full of moments. It's poignant.
I don't know how or why I hadn't read anything by Ishiguro until this year. He is quickly becoming a favorite.
