I’ll post April’s Books of the Month tomorrow. This is an opportunity for the readers to get involved. Leave a comment telling me what nonfiction and/or fiction book you think should be next months Book of the Month.

Also, I’ll be writing reviews for March’s Books of the Month, Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat and George Orwell’s 1984 sometime in the next week. So, if you want to beat me to the punch on discussing them, head on over to the forums.

Tags: book of the month, books, book club, 1984, world is flat, friedman, orwell

Source: Publishers Weekly

Tags: nonfiction, bestseller, secret, in an instant, women money, you on a diet, i feel bad about my neck, audacity of hope, long way gone, somebodys gotta say it, best life diet, hardcore diaries

Source: Publishers Weekly

Tags: fiction, bestseller, nineteen minutes, whitehorn woods, shopaholic baby, step on a crack, sisters, innocent in death, watchman, double bind, for one more day, plum lovin

Since I’ve just come off a streak of reading nonfiction books about genetic engineering, Patterson’s pageturner was a relief.

Max, Fang, Iggy, Gasman, Nudge, and Angel are back for a second round of action, running from Erasers, outsmarting the whitecoats. The six genetically engineered bird kids and their talking dog, Total, pick up where the last round left off. They have information that might lead them to their parents. Max’s Voice is driving her crazy. And, they’re going to school (the real kind).

Ari, the genetically engineered Eraser (half-wolf, half-human), finally shows his human side. This was the one thing the first book, The Angel Experiment, was lacking. We see that he is not just a monster, but he has retained his human feelings after all of his alterations. But, we are also reminded that he is 7-year-old boy beneath that grown exterior.

Most of the story is told through the eyes of Max. She becomes jealous of the FBI agent who takes them in and plays the mother role to the kids for a while. She becomes jealous, or at least mad, at the girl who kisses Fang at school.

Patterson focuses on character development throughout most of the book. Nothing happens that actually moves the story along, and I was left wanting a little more. It felt like the major storyline left off in the same place that it began.

It’s hard not to like the action. Not to like the easy-flowing style. The characters that you come to love.

Overall, it’s not a bad addition to the series. I hope he answers some of the big questions in the next book though. Otherwise, the series will probably lose its appeal.

Not to end on a bad note, because I did enjoy reading School’s Out — Forever, I want to say that you should definitely read this series if you’re looking for something a little lighter and want to have fun.

Patterson will not disappoint.

Tags: books, james patterson, maximum ride, schools out forever, action, genetic engineering

Source: Publishers Weekly

Tags: bestseller, shopaholic baby, step on a crack, innocent in death, sisters, watchman, double bind, for one more day, plum lovin, alexandria link, high profile

Feel free to further discuss these books in the book reviews section.

Anyway, be sure to check out the forums while you’re here, and start chatting with other members. Invite your book-loving friends also.

Tags: comments, updates

This is a story about love. A love that is so strong, so intense, that it transcends life and death. It goes beyond what any of us mere mortals can even think to call love. Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is epic in a way that is arguably more epic than that of even Romeo and Juliet. And, I don’t say this lightly.

Brontë created a world so vastly different from her own, mingling Romanticism and Realism for a fight to the death. The first volume describes our two lovers’ heated passion in a way that many could relate to. It is not until the second volume that we see why Heathcliff is the Heathcliff we met earlier in the novel.

Most of the story is told from the eyes of Nelly Dean, a servant for the Earnshaw, Linton, and Heathcliff families (all at various points in her life). A young man named Lockwood has rented Thruscross Grange because he has ran away from his own love. Nelly is his housekeeper, and she tells him the story of Catherine and Heathcliff.

However, Catherine and Heathcliff only share part of the story. Eventually, Catherine, Catherine’s daughter, and Linton, Heathcliff’s son, share their own love story.

Heathcliff is seeking revenge in the second volume. I’ve heard many voice that they didn’t like his character much after this point, but it was some of the best-written work that I’ve read in a while. Heathcliff’s search for vengeance only fuels the idea of love conquering all. If he hadn’t tortured Hareton or Catherine (younger), the reader wouldn’t believe that his love for Catherine went beyond all other loves.

Heathcliff is a compelling Romantic character in a world that isn’t meant for him. He is driven to cruelty from the start, but Catherine sends him over the edge. He becomes obsessive, and his love for her makes him evil to all others. This is not a story about happily-ever-after-love. It’s a story about hearts driven to madness. Unobtainable love. Passion so unsettling that you cringe at every act of vengeance Heathcliff puts to his victims.

It’s all for love. We see this as Heathcliff wills himself to finally settle with Catherine.

I was a bit disappointed with the Realist ending of young Catherine and Hareton, but this is a Realist novel.

It’s one of those novels that you either love or hate. If you like reading stories where everything ends with the big, happy wedding, this isn’t your story. If you want to read about passsion, madness, vengeance, and a love that transcends all things, this is the novel you should read. I still recommend reading it at least once though, no matter what type of story you prefer.

My faith is now restored in Realism. I only wish that Brontë had lived long enough to give us more, and to see Wuthering Heights become a success.

Tags: emily bronte, wuthering heights, heathcliff, catherine, hareton, love, realism, novel, realist, romanticism, romantic

Anyone who’s kept up with some of my book reviews knows that I’ve been reading about biological enhancement and what the future holds for the human race. When I first saw the title of James Hughes’ book, I immediately thought I would read about further proof that we are on the brink of a biological uplifting of our society—a social change so vast that the world as we know it will be redefined.

But, Hughes brings us sci-fi optimists back down to planet earth. It’s all right there in the subtitle, “Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.” So, what does he mean by “respond”?

He means we, as a society, need to have a conversation about what the next 100 years will bring, and what exactly we’re going to do about it. The next 50 years. The next 10 years.

He recognizes that there is a need for a serious discussion of bioethics. He recognizes that Francis Fukuyama, appointed to the President’s Council on Bioethics, was the wrong man for the job.

Most importantly, he notes that the term “citizen” will have to be redefined.

I think he may go a little off-chart by putting the great apes in the same classification as human children and demented and mentally disabled adults. But, I won’t argue too much there because numerous studies have shown that those great apes might have something that we attribute to consciousness, self-awareness.

He notes that he attended a conference where a transgendered person spoke of being the first of the transhumans. So, is this the first step? Thus far, the U.S. hasn’t been extremely tolerant of the transgendered, but I can see that changing in the future. We’re never tolerant of difference at first. Eventually, people start seeing things differently as time passes on. We’ve seen that with women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, and are now beginning to see a gay rights movement.

The next movements may involve the transhuman movement—rights for the biologically enhanced. This is where the trouble may start. In the other movements, humans were equal in intelligence and physical attributes, for the most part. However, without a serious discussion of the dos and don’ts of biological enhancement, we may create a species of man that is vastly more intelligent and physically superior.

Without the proper steps taken to ensure their rights, we could put ourselves on the brink of another civil war. Or, a world in which humans version 1.0 are enslaved.

With writers such as Philip K. Dick and other greats, whose words tell how humans must fight against future technology, we’ve become accustomed to think of danger when we think of technological advancement. Hughes believes that “If there is to be a future for progressive politics it has to come from a rebirth of a sexy, high-tech vision of a radically democratic future, a rediscovery of the utopian imagination.”

Maybe that’s what we’ve lost, the ability to imagine a future where things might just actually work. A future where disease is erradicated. Where war is rare. Life is fullfilling.

Hughes is an optimist. However, he also has a realistic view of our world. With so much argument over moral permissibility in today’s society, how are we going to face tomorrow’s? We must respond.

Tags: citizen cyborg, james hughes, transhuman, posthuman, politics, biological enhancement, democratic society, future