August 2015 Reading List

The first week of August had me driving around Northern California "on vacation" -- needless to say there wasn't much book reading that week.  But here is the rest of the month's completed books:

1. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
2. Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
4. Damocles by S G Redling

I really am on the fence about Bone Season.  On the one hand it was an alt-history/magic/psi/zombie scifi novel with a bleak outlook for the protagonist.  At first I thought it was a like other YA novels building on a different kind of world but it didn't devolve into drivel-y teenage girl romantic mush.  On the other hand however it is the first in a seven part series and I lack that kind of commitment.  I'd like to see where the story is heading but it might take some peek into the next book's story line before I commit.

With Resurrection I first thought it was a cliched humans vs aliens for domination of the universe.  Certainly the characters were a little flat and difficult to get behind.  But then Dayton started to tie in the ancient Egyptian pyramid appearance into the plot and things got a little more interesting.  The ending was still a little predictable but there was enough in overall story to keep me going.  I'm a sucker for scifi even when its not that good.

I'm one of those people that's only ever read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway so I've never really got a sense of his brilliance -- until now. For Whom the Bell Tolls covers so much -- the futility of war, death, politics and so much more.  What I especially loved however was the formal "thees" and "thous" that marked the written language as being the formal grammar of Spanish being spoken (when compared to English's lazier grammar).  Brilliant!  Hemingway masterfully allowed us to get in the heads of all the main characters showing each to be flawed and courageous at the same time.  Loved it!

And lastly I tried some more "hard sci-fi" this month with Damocles. Redling explores the premise of how first contact might go between humans exploring the universe when meeting other humanoids for the very first time.  Most of the narrative revolves around establishing some form of meaningful dialogue when there are no language cues or common grammar to work with.  I thought there was just too much of this back and forth and little else that would mark the two races as so different.  As with Resurrection though there was enough to keep me interested but not enough to go "wow!" at the end of the book and look around for more by the same author.

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