"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.

"Dance, Dance, Dance" by Haruki Murakami

This book is Murakami's 6th novel and it should be kind of a sequel of 'Wild Sheep Chase', but not exactly.  The unnamed narrator (Baku- I in Japanese) spent 4 years doing mostly nothing since he came back from Sapporo, Hokaido and the Dolphin Hotel, however he keeps feeling drawn back to it, and hears the girl who dissappeared there crying for him. Baku goes to Sapporo again, but the old Dolphin hotel is gone. There is a shiny-looking monstrosity instead.  However the SheepMan is still there and so is a cute receptionist (Yumiyoshi is her name we learn at the end, how fascinating that many characters in Murakami's books have no  names or symbolic names) which has also seen the dark 16th floor and 'is connected' in the SheepMan's switchboard (we learn later).
Baku goes back to Tokyo with an angst-filled teenager of 13 who is also psychic, in a way.  Baku is lost in the world of his superstar actor-friend, the superstar parents of Yuki (famous writer and photographer, the writers name an anagram of Haruki Murakami).  He becomes a baby sitter for the little Yuki and takes her to Hawaii with generous monetary help from her parents, who cannot be bothered, it seems with full-time parenting. In all that, the connections to the world of the SheepMan do not weaken, whether it is through a Thai hooker or a vision of Kiki that leads Baku to an apartment with six skeletons.
Back in Tokyo, and away from the police who gave Baku hell for a few days before because of the murder of a high-class call-girl Mai, his actor-friend turns out to have murdered Kiki, or maybe not? Maybe Kiki just disappeared from this world as if she never existed here.  However dream and reality melds for Baku, as in most Murakami novels, and maybe that is how it should be.  We all live in personal realities which are just individual reflections and bastardizations of the objective reality, which cannot be objectively perceived anyway, thanks to our human senses.  Thus is everything is subjective why not push that subjectivity into directions which makes sense only to us and make only us happy instead of buying into the current consensus reality being pushed down our throats from every possible direction.
At the end, as all Murakami's books, this one is also about losing something, getting lost yourself, and then finding everything, after one passes through a myriad of trials and soul-searchings, some in the outside world and some in the inside one.

"Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman

The entire book could probably be summarized in a few paragraphs, and I am being generous there.  The problem with all these self-help books, even in the ruse of psychology textbooks-wannabes is that they all state the obvious: "don't get upset", "be more balanced", "don't feel bad", "take action" and similar blah, blah, which is obvious to any thinking person, but the problem is that we can't get ourselves to do what we know needs to be done because of emotional holdbacks.  Of course the bully shouldn't bully the other children but work on his own emotional and family issues.  But how to do it? What exactly to do? Step by step.  The only thing that most self-help books seem to imply is that we all need to get a therapist.  Which should be just fine if one can afford it, or have one's insurance pay for it, but most people out there cannot. Then you need good friends.  Or a supportive and understanding family.  Sure.  But what if you can't get any of those or you don't have them readily available?

The book postulates that there is such a thing as emotional intelligence and that it is different from the regular, IQ intelligence.  Then goes on to beat around the bush and quote stories and case studies from author's practice and his own life (how NOT tacky) where the principles of the so-called emotional intelligence are demonstrated and proved-by-anecdote. Overall a tedious reading, as most of these books are, and not much new knowledge to be obtained than what would one get by reading an average Wikipedia page on the issue.

"A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway

A second read of this classic.  I saw the movie too, but I didn't like it too much; too stiff and dry, which is definitely not the book, if you understand it right.  The first time I read it, it was in translation, and translation never does justice to the real thing.  That's one of the reasons I am trying to learn as many languages as possible. Hemingway's English is a special language.  It is simple, creeps up on you without you even noticing and grips you and won't let go, like that little animal from Jack London's stories.  The language is simple, the words are simple, but it is in that simplicity that the most horrifying events and the deepest emotions, loss, love, in-love, out-of-love are described with more emotional effect than the most pompous 19th century prose.

Hemingway started out as a journalist, so his style started in journalistic factualism and brevity.  He also fought in WWI, and in the the Italian Army, so the character in the book is largely himself, though, of course, poetic license allows for plenty of 'what could have happened' scenarios.  The story is of an American volunteer in the Italian Army, driver of an ambulance and also a low-rank officer.  He sees and talks about the real war.  Not the patriotic BS that the masses are being fed in the cities, but the pointless, senseless killing and apathy and absence of any morale or will to fight, except among the dumb and the idiots and the ones profiteering from it.  The only respite from the constant killing and attempts to escape the front on the smart ones part are the whorehouses, and the big event there is when the girls get changed.

Our hero drinks hard, talks hard and records even harder conversations of his fellow men, half of which despise him, especially the higher-up officers, and the other half are trying to get something from him.  Just like real life.  It is the realism of the novel that is most striking. It happens during WWI, but it could be any conflict, anywhere, anytime, from the Romans to Libya, human nature doesn't change.  Homo homini lupus est.  And it has to be that way, otherwise we wouldn't have evolved.  And nowhere that is more evident than during time of war.  There is a love story, of course, though it doesn't get fully developed until the end of the book, and it is better that way, as the infantile English nurse with her constant gibberish gets on one's nerves, and, no matter how awful it sounds, there is a smidgen of a relief when she doesn't survive the childbirth.  The character goes back to his hotel, his wife and child dead. That is the last sentence of the novel.

The real pleasure in the novel is the language.  The language flows and is natural and is interesting in ways and places one would not expect to have interest, especially for the reader in the second decade of the 21st century - not enough sex or graphic description of violence and suffering.  Everything is understated and explained in regular, everyday language, which only makes it more authentic and genuine.  One has a feeling that is actually there and knows that the author has been there.

"Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk

This is the second book I read by Palahniuk, after I was amazed by Fight Club, both the book and the movie, so I looked for more of his work.  This book is quite more specific and disturbing than Fight Club, but follows more or less the same topics, as all Palahniuk's books are.  The main character is a sex addict who is also a son of a single mother who spent her entire life in jail for different acts of social terrorism and kidnapping.  Palahniuk describes the sex addiction working groups and the people who come there in great detail, but with superfluous gory details which actually detract from the strength of the book.  I prefer Murakami's subtle and metaphorical description of the greatest evils and deeds.  Palahniuk actually succeeds in making even mundane actions, like flossing of teeth, into disgusting gore-fests, complete with description of rotten chunks of food and bleeding gums.
Victor Mancini, the main character, chokes on food in restaurants and has people save him; people who become his life-long sponsors because he gave them the pleasure and meaning of saving another person's life.  He also works as an actor in a pioneer fortress nearby and describes the drug use and debauchery that goes on there.  Eventually his mother dies and the doctor that was going to save her turns to be just another patient.   Victor is arrested and his diaries of step 4 in SA are discovered, so all his dirtiest deeds are being read aloud in the police station.  He tries to choke to die, but is saved again by the policemen.  It becomes a metaphore for his entire life: choking, but unable to die.