I was going to start by saying that it was probably a bad idea to stay up reading, particularly since tomorrow (or today) is a long day at work, but then I changed my mind.
My introduction to John Scalzi was via "The Android's Dream", a book I enjoyed very much. So when I saw "Old Man's War" on the shelves at Tor, I naturally took a copy.
It's his first book, although you wouldn't know reading it. There are several semi-awkward chunks of exposition, but the writing is so good that he almost gets away with them. His dialogue is particularly 'punchy'; I suspect if he ever turns to screenplays he will be very successful.
I began reading the book several days ago, because I'd been reading "Speaker for the Dead", and had to put that away due to the recent Card revelations. The opening interested me - an old man visits his dead wife's grave, and then enlists in the army - and so I kept reading. I've been reading in hour-long or so periods ever since then, until tonight.
There are some books that you can read in controlled bursts. Then there are those that you think you can do so with, but eventually discover you can't. This is one of those books, at least for me. Another was "A Home at the End of the World", yet others "Prep", "Never Let Me Go" and "Maurice". I'm hard-pressed to find a commonality between them, save that they all exceed a certain baseline of quality, but there it is.
And I think that's the main reason I want to be published. The desires to be recognized, to earn shitloads of money, to earn strangers' respect and attention - all of these things are true, but at the end of the day (or night, as it were), I think I just want someone to close the covers of my book and think, 'damn, that was worth it'. To have someone give his or her time to you and feel better for having done so: if you think about it, that's really the most you can ask from and offer anyone.
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