Ender's Game Book Series

Last Fall I read the whole Ender's game series. I was drawn into the saga with playfulness, popiness, and relaxing Book 1: reading Ender's Game was super fun.

Ender's Game (Book 1)

I didn't expect the series to take such a serious turn (as I neared the ending of the first book), but I have to say that's what kept me reading on and what made me stick with it.
I'm not a fan of Orson Scott Card's writing style. There's something about the way he writes that's annoying to my reading aesthetics. But maybe what applies here is the saying that it's what's inside that matters. The Ender's series is filled with ideas that linger with me even now, months after finishing the series. I keep churning and churning topics like life after death, cyclical nature of the world we live in, probability of existence of a supreme being, meaning of life, urge to procreate, survival of the fittest, relationships, the dark side inside us, choices, free will, space travel, aliens, sibling love, and so on.

Even more surprising to me was how much I liked the Ender's Shadow series. Why? Because I didn't expect to enjoy military strategy and politics. But I did.

Bean's Series (Ender's Shadow)

There are couple of different ways to read the saga - in the order of writing, one series after the other, or you can switch back and forth between Ender's series and Bean's series. I finished all books in Ender's series first and then followed it by Bean's series. There's no right or wrong way to read it.

Another favorite part about these books is LEADERSHIP. There are tons of books written on how to be a good leader and most of them are so dry and boring and very serious (MBA material). In his books, Card reveals the qualities of what I think make up a true leader, along with some of the downfalls that come with it. Sometimes when I think about work and leadership, I think about Bean and Ender. They may be imaginary characters, but to me they're very close as if they were my teachers.