So. I finally, much to MM's joy, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.

I loved them. I'm weary to read the others as, from what I understand, they are aout adults and not the kids. I like that they are kids.

I really enjoyed Speaker for the Dead when I read it, many years ago; not so much most of Card's other work. My appreciation, such as it is, is now too-tainted by his politics, sadly.

If you can avoid it, don't let politics spoil your enjoyment of a good book. Ezra Pound's poetry is not made less by the fact that he was a facist. Wagner's operas are not less because Wagner was an anti-semite, his wife was a Nazi, and his music was favored by Hitler. Charles Dodson's pedophilia does not discredit Alice in Wonderland (though I know Gaiman does not care for it). I'm using these examples, rather than some writers who are particularly beloved by certain Buffistas; but the principle is important; try not to let darkness in a writers personal life or even later writing spoil your enjoyment.

Gah!

Card does not belong in the same paragraph with Pound, Wagner, or Dodson ... for so many reasons.

He is just a Mormon. His other faults are aside from his ability to spin a tale.

Oh hell Gus, I wasn't comparing him to them. I just want to take more extreme cases. Yeah they are more repulsive morally and larger figures artistically. But in this case I think point to the extreme case makes a stronger point for the more usual one. If a fascist literary giant can be enjoyed, then so may a far right loony who tells a decent story.

You know, I have actually met the dude, and had private conversations with him. He struck me as quite sane. He also struck me as a person who abhors fascism in each of its particular elements.

Carp! This is not about me.

Why are these things never about me?

I seem to recall OSC having some off politics, but I can't remember what they were.

Mostly I'm just tired of the notes he hits repeatedly in his books -- the exploited angelic genius children get old with me fast.

Mostly I'm just tired of the notes he hits repeatedly in his books -- the exploited angelic genius children get old with me fast.

This is entirely fair, and if ever I form a rock band, we shall be called the Exploited Angelic Genius Children.

Card may be personally sane, but his politics are from my point of view loony (remembering that to many here my politics are ditto).

His claiming that any criticism of "Passion of the Christ" as anti-semitic was a case of Jews telling Christians how to be Christians, his argument that homosexuality is a way god uses to mark some people as unclean and morally unworthy, strike me as two examples of fairly loony political and theological viewpoints; neither one as far as I know is inherent in being a Mormon.

The fact that Card is an ultra-conservative Mormon is not, in and of itself, a reason not to enjoy his later books.

The (just to pick the most concrete example that leaps to mind) transformation of Petra from warrior girl-child to weepy existing-only-to-make-babies teenager, on the other hand, is.

Whether the one informs the other is of no interest to me at all -- I still threw the book across the room.