Current Books...
Feb. 2nd, 2005 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafishWent out at lunch to get the book for my book group; typical of me, buying it the day before we're supposed to be talking about it. John seems to begone every time I think about going, and I just haven't felt like chasing three 6-n-unders all around Barnes & Marmoset. Every time we all go, I have a difficult time prying one or more of them away from the trains in the kid's section. This month it's Green Rider by Kristen Britain. Looks like typical escapist fantasy, which is fine by me.
The book for December was The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Man, was this a rather harrowing read, since the book starts out telling of a first contact mission gone horribly wrong, and a Jesuit priest is the only survivor. As his superiors try to wrangle the story out of him,the tale is told by alternating chapters between the present and the mission. Since you know at the beginning that only Father Emilio survived, you are waiting the entire book for the inevitable to happen. I'm not sure it's worse to be taken by surprise. There is a lot of speculation on faith as well - the author describes the book as her coming to terms with her own experience of being raised Catholic, spending 20 years as an atheist, then converting to Judaism. As an agnostic (I don't quite have the courage to declare myself atheist), I was bothered a bit by most of the characters motivations, i.e. "this is so obvious, it can't possibly be coincidence - God must want us to do this thing." However, the author said it was sort of an experiment into how modern, intelligent people could still manage to screw up a first contact mission, just as Europeans did in the past with native peoples. Anyway, it was interesting.
Also picked up Pretending to Be Normal by Lianne Willey. Hmmm, she has a variation of my name. I have been looking for books on Aspergers every time I go to the bookstore, but when they arrange them by author instead of subject, then author, it makes them really hard to find unless I have titles right in hand. I really should make time to go to the library to find these things.
The book for December was The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Man, was this a rather harrowing read, since the book starts out telling of a first contact mission gone horribly wrong, and a Jesuit priest is the only survivor. As his superiors try to wrangle the story out of him,the tale is told by alternating chapters between the present and the mission. Since you know at the beginning that only Father Emilio survived, you are waiting the entire book for the inevitable to happen. I'm not sure it's worse to be taken by surprise. There is a lot of speculation on faith as well - the author describes the book as her coming to terms with her own experience of being raised Catholic, spending 20 years as an atheist, then converting to Judaism. As an agnostic (I don't quite have the courage to declare myself atheist), I was bothered a bit by most of the characters motivations, i.e. "this is so obvious, it can't possibly be coincidence - God must want us to do this thing." However, the author said it was sort of an experiment into how modern, intelligent people could still manage to screw up a first contact mission, just as Europeans did in the past with native peoples. Anyway, it was interesting.
Also picked up Pretending to Be Normal by Lianne Willey. Hmmm, she has a variation of my name. I have been looking for books on Aspergers every time I go to the bookstore, but when they arrange them by author instead of subject, then author, it makes them really hard to find unless I have titles right in hand. I really should make time to go to the library to find these things.
