"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.