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Don't mind me. I was so zonked last night I forgot about my list ... until after midnight. Much less prolific in number of books, but I seemed to have chosen badly, so am easing off. I figure I'll have greater focus once my reading group begins later this month.
47. Sawyer, Robert
Calculating God
I began a hunt for books that are set in Toronto, for the familiarity factor. I started with this book because it seemed fascinating. And it was. A paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum is visited by an alien who parks his (later corrected to her) spacecraft in the square outside of the (no longer functioning because of severe budget cuts) Planetarium next door to the ROM. What a brilliant and human story of friendship, scientific observation that includes a correlation in cataclysmic events across several worlds, the futility of winning against cancer, genetics, fundamentalist crackpots, and space travel. Oh, and the scientific basis for the existence of God. I liked it so much, I renewed the loan and am close to finishing a second read-through.
48. Kaufman, Andrew
All My Friends Are Super Heroes
A quick and disposable read. The super heroes are just weird people who have a certain unorthodox skill set.
49. Sawyer, Robert
The Terminal Experiment
A thoroughly scary book in which the protagonist creates an artificial intelligence, leaves it as the control version while changing two other copies of it to mimic immortality and what he considers a soul would be. Very bad things happen when one of the machines begins to kill. Once he realizes what is happening, can he stop it ... especially after the program has escaped into the internet. Sad and violent, yet still with a satisfying ending.
50. Pyper, Andrew
The Killing Circle
Why, oh why did I borrow this? What good did I expect from a book of this title? But it was set in Toronto, so.... A man joins a writing group that meets in Kensington Market. Week after week, he has no story, so he steals the story from a young woman about child abuse and murder. Oddly enough, he writes a novel based on the story that is published. Then the murders begin. Really ugly visceral descriptions. At the end, the abused siblings (now grown up) have tied up and abandoned him in a freezing house in Northern Ontario, where he'd been tracking them after they'd kidnapped his son. He bargains with them to release his child, saying he will die to secure the release. That's the persuasive psychological hook for the damaged, sociopathic siblings ... that a parent would sacrifice his own life to save a child. I felt so creepy after finishing it, I renewed Calculating God to try to return to a state of serenity.
47. Sawyer, Robert
Calculating God
I began a hunt for books that are set in Toronto, for the familiarity factor. I started with this book because it seemed fascinating. And it was. A paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum is visited by an alien who parks his (later corrected to her) spacecraft in the square outside of the (no longer functioning because of severe budget cuts) Planetarium next door to the ROM. What a brilliant and human story of friendship, scientific observation that includes a correlation in cataclysmic events across several worlds, the futility of winning against cancer, genetics, fundamentalist crackpots, and space travel. Oh, and the scientific basis for the existence of God. I liked it so much, I renewed the loan and am close to finishing a second read-through.
48. Kaufman, Andrew
All My Friends Are Super Heroes
A quick and disposable read. The super heroes are just weird people who have a certain unorthodox skill set.
49. Sawyer, Robert
The Terminal Experiment
A thoroughly scary book in which the protagonist creates an artificial intelligence, leaves it as the control version while changing two other copies of it to mimic immortality and what he considers a soul would be. Very bad things happen when one of the machines begins to kill. Once he realizes what is happening, can he stop it ... especially after the program has escaped into the internet. Sad and violent, yet still with a satisfying ending.
50. Pyper, Andrew
The Killing Circle
Why, oh why did I borrow this? What good did I expect from a book of this title? But it was set in Toronto, so.... A man joins a writing group that meets in Kensington Market. Week after week, he has no story, so he steals the story from a young woman about child abuse and murder. Oddly enough, he writes a novel based on the story that is published. Then the murders begin. Really ugly visceral descriptions. At the end, the abused siblings (now grown up) have tied up and abandoned him in a freezing house in Northern Ontario, where he'd been tracking them after they'd kidnapped his son. He bargains with them to release his child, saying he will die to secure the release. That's the persuasive psychological hook for the damaged, sociopathic siblings ... that a parent would sacrifice his own life to save a child. I felt so creepy after finishing it, I renewed Calculating God to try to return to a state of serenity.
