Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite books, having now gone through these pages three times. ⁠It’s very American in the way that it’s about competition, and the alien invasion ⁠is a both an excuse and a metaphor to put winning above anything else. It’s also this type of glorification of conflict, found in movies like American Sniper or Rocky, that we don’t do a lot in the Netherlands.

It’s not literary in the form of extremely advanced prose, but this makes such a fast and joyful read. A whole functioning world is built with minimal description, so that your mind can create its own image. The book excels at dialogue and explains leadership and how the characters co-exists, as well as their inner-mechanics.