"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote

An interesting short novel.  The language of Capote really comes through.  All the characters in the book sound very authentic and his observations are sometimes hilarious.  One can see that the author has spent plenty of time among the 'elite' of New York City at that time, the socialites, the bankers, the brokers, etc.  The main character of the story, Holly Golightly is doing quite well in the socialite circles of New York, finding one or another "sponsor" to pay her bills which can get pretty high as she likes to show that she has expensive tastes.  Her only source of income is the weekly visit to a Mafia boss in Sing-Sing to whom she 'talks' but what really happens is seen towards the end of the book.

Unfortunately things don't go well for Holly.  Her less-than-glorious past comes to light when her husband from Texas (whom she married at 14) comes to New York to look for her.  Then it turns out that the weekly conversations in Sing Sing were actually coded messages to the New York mafia.  Her current sugar daddy, who's baby she's carrying, Jose, abandons her, since he cannot have his name connected with the scandal. Holy is devastated as she was studying Portuguese and learning about Brazilian culture for months before than, despite Jose never telling her he wants to marry her. Her brother dies.  In the midst of all this she asks the author of the story for a list of the 50 richest men in Brazil.

Holly disappears, only to write from Brazil few months later, no baby anymore, that she met a delightful old gentleman who's loaded, but there is a small formality of his wife and seven children.  The author concludes that for women like Holly there will always be another hunting ground, but are women like that ever truly happy?

"Children of the Mind" by Orson Scott Card

This is the fourth and final (? not really) book in the Ender/Andrew Wiggin tetralogy. It took me much longer time to read it (besides busy schedule and a lay-off) because it is a difficult book to read.  There is very little action happening in the book, but most of it is philosophical conversations about different existential issues.  Issues covered overtly and covertly are the existence of a supreme out-of-this-concept-of-the-universe God (or Godhead would be more appropriate as the Gnostics called that entity), the relationship of this good with lesser entities, like angels (which could be Jane or the Queen formics), the role of free will in human's relationship with the supernatural, the concept of the soul and how could it fit within textbook physics, the role of marriage, sex inside (or outside) a marriage, the role of faith in the lives of people (humans and alien pecaninos), the role and duties of the priesthood class and finally Ender as a flawed Jesus Christ (in which case Jane might be the Holy Spirit).

The deep wish and urge of Card to explain his Mormon fate scientifically and universaly is painfully visible throughout the novel and is rather distracting. Auya is a soul, anyone can see that, but with the philotic postulations Card goes further to try to explain Auyas as must-haves, but then we get into discussing zombies (the new Peter and the new Valentine) who are alive but have no souls (Auyas), while the transfer of Auyas Card is describing reminds very closely of certain Voodoo rituals and possessions.

The book has some interesting concepts, but it is not based on a plot or a story, but rather Card's desire to rationally explain the irrational concepts his faith has imposed on him.  This effort, which is painfully obvious at times, detracts from the artistic side of the book and makes it of much lesser quality than the previous three ones.  I will not be reading any more Ender books (be they "Shadow" or otherwise).

"Eat Stop Eat" by Brad Pilon

This is a shortish e-book written by a body-builder and long time supplement industry insider.  It doesn't show anything that is not already known and present in other books and on the Net, but does a great job of effectively and succinctly summarizing all that knowledge in one organized presentation.  The main point of the book is that no diet will work long-term unless it restricts the calorie intake in an acceptable way.  Most diets work short term because of the calorie restriction effect, not some magic in them, and fail in the same way, because long-term the food restrictions imposed cannot be maintained effectively in the everyday life.

The Intermittent Fasting (IF) is different from the regular water fasting in that it only lasts for 24 hours in a sequence (although one can do two 24 hour periods per week, but no in sequence) and is repeated every week for the rest of one's life.  Water fasting usually last between 3 and 14 days, and is done once a season or once a year and require much greater preparations and arrangements for the regular employed full-time person.  The IF results in between 50 and 110 fasting days per year which cumulatively is more than most of the averages on water fasting.

The author also recommends combining the IF with 2-3 strength training sessions per week and recommends it for body building.  Body builders can reduce calories and increase health with IF without losing any muscle mass, which sometimes happens with longer water fasting.  Why nobody recommends fasting as often, the author asks? From his experience in the supplement industry he answers: because nobody can make money off it.  It has been the natural way of controlling weight and restoring health for thousands of years, but it cannot be made into a pill or capsule and cannot be sold.  That's why there's plenty of disinformation and no concerned effort to promote it.

Some myths about fasting are dispelled in the book.  It won't make you lose muscle mass.  The weight loss is not only water.  It won't influence your digestive health negatively (quite the opposite).  It won't make you dizzy or weak (that comes from your sugar addiction), etc. etc.   An amazing book for the people who haven't discovered fasting and the way it can improve health.

"Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven

This is the second book about the Ringworld, following 10 years after the first one.  The franchise has grown to four books apparently.  I read some reviews online about the first two books, and many reviewers like the second one over the first one, saying that nothing really happens in the first one except the description of the Ringworld.  Well, let me give you a news flash, THAT is all the first book was about, and was GREAT in doing that, explaining a new and original concept, a sliver of a Dyson sphere.  The rest of the narrative (except the three main characters, Louis Wu, a puppeteer and a K'zinth) is pretty much secondary and falls flat.  Well in the second book, the entire book falls flat, since there is nothing really new that could be discovered that could overshadow the Ringwold itself.  Yes, yes, we learn that Pak protectors built it and about many other facilities on the Ringworld, but that was to be guessed.  Nothing in the second volume would strike the reader as powerfully as the description of the Ringworld in the first volume.

Indeed, we meet a lot of new humanoid species, apparently all developed from Pak breeders that were originally there, but so what?  All these hominid species which seem like forced earth-animal paradigms on the hominid frame are actually making the book seem silly.  Their habits and ways are very predictable and silly.  They don't seem real, but seem like cartoonish characters from a children's book.  And they have sex all the time!! With everyone!! Come'on! I know our own society is largely very backward about sex and physical intimacy, but every hominid fucking every other (3m Grass Giants with 1.2m Hanging People???) is just ridiculous and silly.

Finally the story is tired.  A puppeteer (the Hindmost in this case, though Nessus was cuter) kidnaps Wu and Chmee (the new name for Speaker-to-Animals) and takes them to the Ringworld in order to find a large-scale transmutator machine which never really existed except in the wrong speculations in Louis Wu's head.  They find the Ringworld off-center and heading for a collision with it's sun, and run around trying to find out how they can save it, after Wu had sex with the locals (again) and this time Chmee also had sex with no less than six K'zinthi females, which could even talk! Silly.

Anyway, Niven never intended to write another Ringworld book, but because of the storm of fan mail he got, much of which from scientists and science students (MIT students chanted "The Ringworld is not stable" at the 1971 ComiCon in San Diego), exposing, in length, all the things why the Ringworld cannot exist, he decided to write a sequel and explain all the inconsistencies.  That's how we got the RamJets on the ring's perimeter, the sewage for the oceans, the sun-powered mega laser, etc. etc.  It was an attempt to close the holes in the first book, without introducing too many new ones.  However, there are still two more volumes, so one has to guess that there are more loose ends.  However, this reader is not curious any more.

"Ringworld" by Larry Niven

    "Ringworld" was written in 1970 and has won the "triple crown" of science fiction awards for that year.  Although Niven had published before this volume, and also the "Known Space" universe in which the action takes place has been created by Niven before and used in other stories, this novel has become the work by which Niven is identified in the wider reader community.  The main invention in the novel, a RingWorld, is a sub-case of the Dyson Sphere, which postulates that a sufficiently advanced civilization will outgrow planets as living spaces, as the planets with appropriate gravity (not too big, not too small) do not have enough space to house properly all the members of an expanding, technologically advanced, star-travelling civilizations.  Dyson proposed building of a humongous sphere that would enclose a sun/star at a distance which would be comfortable for the temperature requirements of the sentient species that builds the sphere.

     Dyson sphere has many problems.  It needs artificial gravity across the habitable surface.  It might be difficult to keep the sphere centered on the star in the middle.  And you can't see the stars.  Niven simplified the concept by imagining only a circular strip of the sphere, a ring, orbiting around the central sun.  Gravity would be provided by the centrifugal force and you can see the stars.  This was a great invention at the time, and Niven received many accolades.  However in 1971 MIT students and other readers pointed out that even though the ring is much simpler than a sphere, it is still a rigid structure, and as such does not actually orbit around the central sun, affected by its gravity and eventually will become un-centered and destroyed.  Niven made this a central plot of his next Ringworld novel, "Ringworld Engineers".  Afterwards, further simplifications have been proposed, such as having half-rings or partial rings, which would not be rigid structures and would actually orbit the central sun moved by its gravity.

   Niven is well-known for his vivid descriptions of alien races, and in this book he describes the K'zint, a feline-like, 8 foot tall creatures with internal genitalia, and Pierson Puppeteers, herbivores with two heads on long necks and a brain held in their main trunk, which are currently the most technically advanced species in the Know-Space.  The Puppeteers are genetically afraid, as they originate from herbivore, herd animals and are trying to eliminate every potential threat to their existence, no matter how trivial it might sound.  The fear of death and injury is their main motivator and the ones that do not have it to an extreme extent, like Nessus, are considered insane by the rest of the species.  They performed experiments on both the K'zind and humans, trying to breed the former for less aggression and the latter to develop a sort of "Psychic Luck."  These characterstics come handy when Nessus takes Luis Wu and Speaker-to-Animals with Teella Brown to the RingWorld, but eventually it turns out that even the Puppeteers' intelligence and technology could not predict all the consequences that ensued.

   The novel ends when Luis Wu, Speaker-to-animals and Nessus (who has been decapitated and is not known if he survived) leave the RingWorld while Teella Brown stays there for good with her new chosen mate, The Seeker.  Niven didn't intend to write sequels, but bowing to fan pressure, he wrote 3.  Each of them could be read as an independent work though, while connected to the rest.

"1Q84" by Haruki Murakami

    This is the latest novel by Murakami, made available in English only last year.  It is similar to other Murakami novels in style and structure, but foregoes the first-person narrative which has become Murakami's trademark.  This has been held against him by some reviewers, but it doesn't seem to me that detracts from the atmosphere and the beauty of the book.  I must say that I felt this novel is weaker than several of his other books that I have read and loved.  It is definitely the largest of all, counting at over 1000 pages, but it seems to me that it could have been at least 1/3 smaller without significant loss of meaning.  It feels like the author has tried to write an epic book, something that will be monumental, but Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, although about 1/3 shorter, feels like a story of much more epic proportions.
  The book introduces us to Tengo and Aomame, the main characters who met when they were 10 years old and fell in love, something that they didn't truly realize until they became 30.  Aomame is a fitness instructor who kills abusive husbands on the side, while Tengo is a part-time mathematics teacher and full-time writer.  Things get more complicated when a secretive pseudo-religious organization "Sakigake" and Aomame murders their Leader, a man with telepathic and telekinetic capabilities, which seem to be just the surface of his powers.  The characters move from the original world of the story happening in 1984 to another world, that Aomame calls 1Q84 (Q (kyu) in Japanese means 9), where there are non-material beings called "the little people" who "talk" to special people called "receivers" and create entities by incubating them in floating cocoons called Air Chrysalis.
  Although the "little people" are never fully explained, as other Murakami's books, it is suggested they have always shared this planet with humans and communicated with special representatives of the human race. The book is a combination of a love story, fantasy story and description of Japanese society in the mid-80s.  The correlation with Orwell's 1984 world is quite subtle, having to do with the Big Brother concept, of which the "little people" and the Sakigake members could be seen as proxies.  Overall, I was left underwhelmed by the book, even at 1000+ pages and over 48 hours on audio, it still fails to rise to the heights of "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", "Kafka on the Shore" and even "Norwegian Wood."  It is a great book, but not mind-blowingly-amazing like the afore mentioned Murakami titles.

"Conan the Usurper" by Robert E. Howard

   This volume, part of the first softcover printing of Howard's Conan stories edited by LeCamp, chronologically fits between Conan the Warrior and Conan the Conqueror.  Conan is in his 40s and looking forward to become king of Aquilonia, the strongest of the Hyperborean kingdoms.  The volume containts four stories.  The first, about a pirate's treasure guarded by demons, has been heavily rewritten by LeCamp and notes the start of Conan's interest in leading Aquilonia's rebelion.  The second story is set in Conan's universe, but only remotely mentions Conan himself as leading the rebellion.  The third story is about the campaigns of Conan and him fighting and winning over the wizard Thoth-Amon on his path to the crown of Aquilonia.
  The fourth and final story is actually the blueprint for the last (as in Conan's age) Conan volume, Conan the Conqueror, and describes the events in a more concise manner.  This is probably the weakest Conan volume overall, but Conan's allure has always been set out in those few great stories like Red Nails and the imagination of the subsequent writers like Robert Jordan, the comics franchise and the movies.

"Conan the Conqueror" by Robert E. Howard

This is another of the Conan editions edited by Sprague LeCamp. In this novelette Conan is around 46 and has been a king of Aquilionia for a while.  He got there by deposing the original kings and their dynasty and in this volume Valerius, one of the heirs of the old dynasty, with the help of a wizard awakes a 3,000 year dead wizard Xulthotun and with his help win over Conan's army and overthrow Conan as the king of Aquilonia.  However Xulthotun secretly saves Conan and brings him to the siege camp to offer him to be the puppet king of Aquilonia instead of Valerius, but Conan refuses and is saved from a death by being eaten by a giant, gray ape by a slave girl.
  Conan then goes through much of the new kingdoms gathering support for himself but also trying to follow the path of the Hearth of Ahriman, a magical jewel that can be used to bring mummies back to life and fight against the magic of Xulthotun.  Conan ends in Stygia, way south, where the cultist of Seth, the snake god, have stolen the jewel to put it in a pyramid-shaped temple of Seth and bring back to life a number of ancient Stygian sorcerers from their mummies.  Conan is kidnapped by a 10,000 year old near-naked female vampire, but he resist her call and eventually kills the cultists and the Kithai followers and gets the jewel.
  On the way back to Aquilonia Conan gathers a huge army and attacks Xulthotun and Valerius near a river which fails to rise as cast by Xulthotun's magic because the Heart of Ahriman was used against him.  Finally Xulthotun is killed by Conan and turns into a shriveled mummy, which is what he was all along.  Conan becomes a king of Aquillonia once again and frees the slave girl that helped him.
  Overall an interesting read, though too much emphasis on battles and less on monsters, which is what usually makes good Conan stories.  Anyway, written by the legendary Robert E. Howard and published last before his suicide at age 30, this is an entertaining and exciting story in the Conan storyline.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is a seminal book in literature, one of the pillars of modern and post-modern prose.  Although the narrative is not very clear and autobiographical parts are mixed with hallucinations and speculative thought, the overall pace of the novel is interesting and thought-provoking.  The story loosely follows Rolling Stone journalist Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer Dr. Gonzo as they drive from LA to Las Vegas with a suitcase of every imaginable and obtainable drug to cover first a race and then a convention about drugs for police officers.  The characters in the novel are on drugs and alcohol combinations pretty much through the entirety of the book and much of the narrative describes them panicking from taking too much of some particular drug or mixing too many different drugs together.

After arriving at the first hotel to cover the race in Las Vegas, the pair destroys the hotel room where they were staying, already high on the many drugs they consumed on the way there from LA.  When being thrown out they separate and Raul Duke drives back to LA while the Samoan flies.  However Raoul turns around half-way through, after being stopped by a smartass cop and meets with Dr. Gonzo, the lawyer, who now has in tow an imbecilic girl, who's apparently a wannabe painter from the Midwest.  As she is high on LSD the pair decides to get rid of her, but she follows them until they get separated and lose her in the stupor of their continuous drug and alcohol binge.

The book is a great example of Gonzo journalism, invented by H.S. Thompson while working hiself for the Rolling Stone and other newspapers.  It is interesting that Thompson wrote several variations on the same style (and pretty much the same book) throughout his entire life until he shot himself at age 60.  This book and his proverbial hatred for Nixon are probably the best-known legacies of his literary career.

"After Dark" by Haruki Murakami

"After Dark" was the last novel by Haruki Murakami before 1Q84 and it is a little bit different than most Murakami's novels.  First, it is very short, which is very unlike Murakami, only 206 pages.  It was published in 2004 but the first English translation was done in 2007, while the audio book one even later.  The novel happens in only 6 hours between midnight and 6am, mostly in a Denny's restaurant and a nearby love hotel "Alphaville".  Mari, a 19 years old student and Takahashi, trombone player and student who met Mari and her beautiful sister Eri some time back for a pool party.

There is a former female wrestler involved, who is now the manager of the love hotel.  A few maids in the hotel also appear on stage, as well as a 19 years old, beaten up and robbed of all belongings, start naked Chinese prostitute.  A representative of a Chinese prostitution gang and a sadistic computer programmer who works night shifts and uses prostitutes regularly to get away from his ordinary wife and kids round up the main characters in the book.  A main character who spends most of the book sleeping is Eri, Mari's beautiful sister who one night declares she will go to sleep for a longer time and continues to sleep for the next two months.

The book is written more like a movie script or a teleplay than a true novel.  Often the author tells us directly about what point of view we have, at what angle we are seeing things and uses declarative descriptions like in a play script.  This detracted from the book for me and made me unable to enjoy it as much as his other works like The Wind Up Bird, Norwegian Wood, Dance dance dance, Kafka on the shore, etc.  There are not too many magical elements, except for Eri sleeping in a non-deterministic room in a non-deterministic space and world.  An interesting read overall, but below Murakami's usual standards.

"Flash Fiction" by James and Denise Thomas

This was the required reading book for my Junior Creative Writing class in college.  I never finished reading it then, and didn't find the time to do it in the following 13 years or so... until now.  All of the stories are 750 words or less.  It has become a kind of a fad in the last decade for notable magazines to put very short word limits on accepted fiction work, like 1200 words, or 900 words or even 750 words.  I never believed that one could express proper emotion and build proper characters in such short space.  The only thing you could do in such short space is write "mood pieces", a bit in Rimbaud style, a bit like emotional safety valve going off in a more-or-less connected and relevant emotional rambling.  For the most, it is true of the stories in this book.  These are the kind of fiction stories one might find inside general interest magazines or tabloids.  Not too much time investment, but still a certain payoff for reading them.  Writing short-short fiction requires meticulous planning - or none at all. It depends.

There are some definite gems in this collection.  Some of my favorites are:  232-9979, Subtotals, How to touch a bleeding dog and Deportation at Breakfast.  Still, it is difficult to get emotionally involved and dis-involved (in order to move to the next story, the next involvement) in only 750 words.  A writer can write for a certain word length (comics authors do it all the time, and the outcome is good), but that does not give the writer the freedom to let the imagination flow, there are limits, artificial ones that stifle and smother.  That is not the way.  If a writer expresses a full emotion or idea and the result happens to be under 750 words (very unlikely) then so be it, but the word limit should never be one of the starting parameters of a work of art.  This book can be read over many days, and that is probably the way to do it, but in that way it is easy to forget it it, and remember it 10 years later.  You can also read it in one day, a few hours, but then it results in a jumble of images and emotions in your head.  I am not sure which is worse.

"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami

One of the last Murakami's books, it is also one of the more experimental ones.  Though "The Wind-up Bird Chronicles" has plenty of riddles and points left for the reader to figure them out, in "Kafka on the Shore" one feels that this kind of structure is taken to the next level where it forms the basis of the entire book.  It is a story of Kafka Tamura and Satoru Nogata, two lines of narrative that intertwine and depend on each other without the two characters ever actually physically meeting.  Murakami has mixed some US army reports from the occupation period of Japan about mysterious occurrences which have to do with the story, but also to remind the Japanese reader about that psychologically painful period in Japanese history which some contemporaries refuse to believe it ever happened, as does one of the characters in the book.

The first 300 pages seem to talk about unconnected events and some parts are so meticulous in details (like Kafka washing himself, pointing to every body part as he goes over it) that to the the Western reader, used to instant-everything and "jumprightintotheaction" narratives it might be unnerving, but, in classical Murakami style, everything comes together in the last 100 pages in a brilliant and fascinating way.  One of the main story lines is the Oedipal myth, where the 15 year old Kafka Tamura has sex with a woman who could (and yet, also does not have to) be his mother.  He also has sexual encounters with a much younger woman, Sakura, who could be his sister, but yet, does not have to.  There are strong sexual descriptions, typical for Murakami, who wants to shake up the Japanese conservative establishment.

The second main theme is the connection of the human with the spiritual or otherworldly, drawn mostly from Shinto worldview of spirits, both in woods and in cities, and gateways through to the other world hidden in special stones, forest clearings and deep woods guarded by entities which are more concepts than anything else.  This view is contrasted by the everyday reality of boring jobs, city lives that go nowhere, and work/life routine that kills the spirit of the human being, one atom at a time.  However, "Kafka on the Shore" is also an uplifting book, hinting at ways of finding oneself in the modern world as well, as long as one stays true and close  to certain symbols and meanings that make the difference between and empty, routine life, and life filled with meaning and excitement.

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins

I started reading this book a long time ago, but it is not the easiest book to read, though Dr. Dawkins is trying to make evolutionary mathematics accessible by the regular popular science reader.  Although it took some time it was eye-opening, especially in the areas of the reasons for genetic altruism, which one can perceive as a critique or explanation of the core and extended family relations and maybe even why you feel love for your close relatives, the closer the genetic relations - the stronger the love.  Dr. Dawkins' main hypothesis is that evolution is driven on the level of genes, not organisms, and that we, humans, and all other organisms are merely "vehicles" for the survival and propagation of genes.

Dr. Dawkins shows that most established group dynamics and other social groups and relationships are not the result of "independent" altruism, but a result of "Evolutionary Stable Strategy" or ESS which has been achieved by the quality of the relationships among the individual of the group, and the main criteria is always the survival and propagation of the gene itself.  In that sense Dr. Dawkins calls the gene "selfish", although he suggests that a  better title for the book would be "The Immortal Gene".  While making the gene the atomic force behind driving evolution forward, the author still concedes that in most combinations, what is best for the gene is also best for the larger organism or "vehicle" of the gene, though this is not always the case.

This is Dr. Dawkins' first book and already his dynamic style can be glimpsed, which makes for a better reading than most popular science books.  Since the publication in 1976 Dr. Dawkins has published many other influential books but this one would be remembered as the one which launched his career.  One can witness the development of the first stages of his recent atheist crusade already in this book, and some of the ideas are presented, though the book is definitely about biology and evolution and not atheism or religion.  Overall an enjoyable and enlightening reading, if a little difficult at times.

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway

Considered by many as the best Hemingway's work and on the required reading lists in many schools around the world (including this blogger's High School), this is a seminal work of human passion, compassion and the meaning found in death for a worthy cause.  Hemingway reported from the Spanish Civil War for several years and from behind the Republican/Communist battle lines.  The main character, Robert Jordan, might have been modeled by the leader of the International Brigades, and American as well.  The novel happens in 4 days and 3 nights and is written in the typical Hemingway minimalistic style, where each word and sentence have a meaning and a role to play in the overall intent, and artsy embellishments are kept down.

Robert Jordan is a dynamiter who is send behind fascist lines to destroy a bridge to support the republican offensive for breaking the siege of Madrid.  He knows he is probably going to die in the assignment and so do most of the people he meets and who help him.  He is attached to a guerrilla unit lead by Pablo and his palm-reading wife Pilar, who is the actual leader of the band.  He meets the young girl Maria who was gang-raped by the fascists in the beginning of the war and with whom Jordan falls in love and sees that love as giving meaning to his short life soon to be over.  Another band who was supposed to help, that of El Sordo, is destroyed by fascist planes and Jordan's and Pablo's mission becomes increasingly suicidal.  This causes Pablo to betray, but he comes back eventually and is essential in fulfilling the goals of mission.

Jordan blows up the bridge, but his leg is cut off by a tank shot.  He remains behind in order not to slow down the survivors after a heart-rending farewell from Maria. The novel ends as he prepares to die in ambush in order to avoid falling alive in the hands of the fascists and be tortured.  The last sentence of the novel is describing how Jordan is waiting for the incoming fascist detachment and could feel "his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest."  This work is rightfully among the classics and "must-read" of world literature describing the worst and the best of the human condition.  The sacrifice of the one for the good of the many is given its rightful esteem and the horrific nature of war, especially civil war in modern times is described with all the honesty and disgusting detail, crushing the ideal of "noble" and "gentlemanly" wars.  "La Guerra Es Puta" say the characters many times throughout.

"Count Zero" by William Gibson

The second book of 'The Sprawl' Trilogy.  The first one, "Neuromancer" set the standards for creative Science Fiction and the beginning of a whole new genre 'Cyberpunk', dystopic, corporations-dominated future with ubiquitous and invasive technology coupled with development of new kinds of artificial consciousnesses which has somewhat ambivalent predisposition towards humanity.  Although the previous book was quite convoluted, using way too much "in-world" jargon and with way too many things to track - this one is even worse.  Unfortunately we don't find compelling characters like Case and Molly here, which were well developed if not completely likable. In Count Zero we have the title character Bobby Newmark, the hired gun Turner and the very flat Marly Krushkova, all of which are not at the level of the previous work.

The book builds on the creation of 'free' AI from the previous tome, which then mysteriously breaks into many pieces.  Here we see that each of those pieces is a sentient being which decide that the most appropriate representation for them in order to communicate with humanity is to become Voodoo gods with the appropriate symbolism and ritualistic 'possession.'  Newmark is setup to try a new ICE breaker which almost kills him but he's saved by a sentient entity in cyberspace which turns out to be the daughter of a scientist trying to escape the corporate giant Maas which Turner is hired to help, before being betrayed by his connection Mitchell.  Krushkova is hired by the super-rich and aging Joseph Virek which is trying to upload his consciousnesses into the cyberspace and become one of the AIs there, thus achieving immortality, which the other, real, AIs, do not look kindly upon.  The largest chunk of Wintermute and Neuromancer's unification and subsequent fragmentation from the previous volume is making Joseph Cornell-style boxes with hidden meanings describing very advanced technology.

Everything winds down to the orbital dwelling where the box-maker intelligence lives where the final showdown occurs and the good guys win, in a way.  The post-modernistic style of writing  does away with much descriptions and explanations, but drops you right in the middle of the actions and makes you figure things out for yourself.  It is a hard book to read, but rewarding if you are a Gibson or Cyberpunk fan, as this is the second part of the cult Trilogy that solidified the genre.

"The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking

I started reading several books at the same time (like 4) again, and the first one I finished was from the great Dr. Hawking.  I wanted to read it ever since it came out, but only got around now to getting it on audio.  I was expecting something revolutionary like the "Short history of time" but the book is actually more of a science popularizing kind than anything else.  It is exposition of cosmological theories from the ancient Greeks to modern times.  The last 1/4 of the book deals with Creationist arguments about the necessity of having intelligent designer because some of the physical constants are so finelly tuned, very small alterations would cause life never to appear, as if our universe was created with human beings in mind.  Dr. Hawking, however proves that this universe HAD to exist, i.e. there was never an option of it not existing, regardless of any external influences, if we can even discuss 'external' in the cosmological sense.

It is fascinating how the good professor explains the most complicated facets in Physics like M-theory or string-theory and the "no-boundary condition" by building from the simplest blocks that everyone understands and makes these complicated physical concepts available for the lay reader.  His dry humor comes through quite often and gives that special flavor to the presentation.  Large tracts of the book are dedicated to how scientific thought developed through the ages, the fallacies that were popular but eventually rejected and the constant thread of scientific progress building on previous body of knowledge.  Throughout the entire book one can feel Dr. Hawking's enormous love for humanity and for life itself.  He and his fellow physicists are the modern priest, the shepherds of the ignorant flock of the human race, guiding it towards a better and glorious future of knowledge.