Who is interested in a book club?
I need to do more reading and am interested in the community dissecting, analysing and criticising books as a group. I'm somewhat spurred on by this title I'm interested in
being given away for a limited time.
"Someone has posted a bomb threat on the door of Chardin Memorial Library, at the heart of one of the finest Jesuit universities in the world.
Everyone inside, no matter how trivial, prestigious, or eccentric, is a suspect.
No one has the foggiest idea why in the hell someone would threaten to bomb a library.
Whatever the explanation, our heroes have to work fast. They have until the end of the semester to find the truth and stop the mad bomber…if either even exists at all.
SYNCHRONICITY (125,000 words) is an offbeat, cerebral mystery about science, religion, the occult, and the quest to apprehend the transcendent in a mundane and frankly boring world. "
Anyone interested in the book club who misses the deadline will sadly have to wait for the next title, I'm open to suggestions for the next titles, generally anything freely available online.
This title interests me as it's from a first time author who's an academic and has shown to be rather creative in producing
political science-fiction on the Aurora forum. He writes in some detail about the process of publishing through amazon
on his blog .
Theres only 2 reviews so far but both have been quite positive.
By Brian
This book is not easy to classify. On the one hand, its discussions of science and rationality remind me somewhat of Neal Stephenson; on the other hand, I don't think Stephenson has ever written something with sorcery. In that sense, it could possibly be classified as 'urban fantasy', although it is very far from a typical urban fantasy.
So what is it actually about? It is about characters fighting against the forces of darkness (or something which chooses to present itself that way) in two locations; students and professors at a small Catholic university in the US, and expats teaching English in Taiwan. These storylines are related, although only loosely. An incredibly disparate group of individuals come together at the college, including sorcerers, catholic priests, people who ineffectively try to measure ghosts with e-meters, and die-hard rationalists obsessed with their own intelligence.
And this is one of reasons the book is good: a lot of the interactions between these extreme individuals are tinged with a faint sense of absurdity. Due to this, found a lot of the book quite funny. Other positive attributes: once the book gets going, its quite engaging and readable, many of the characters, although caricatures, ring true to people I have known (as in, they are extreme versions of real people), and the book brings up many interesting aspects of faith and religion without being heavy-handed in either direction.
In summary, although this book has a few problems, I would recommend it to anyone interested in a cerebral, slightly offbeat, sort-of-urban fantasy. I cannot think of another book like it.
If this sounds like something that interests you give it a shot, I have it on my Iphone and will read and review it within the week. Happy reading
Author
Topic: Bay 12 book club: Synchronicity By William Dooling (Free at Amazon for 3 days!) (Read 801 times)