March 2015 Reading List

Only 3 books in March! 

Disappointing. A near-future novel concerning a machine that can capture your 'soul' just as you die. The idea being that if your body can still be repaired while being kept alive by modern medical technology, your soul can be reintegrated with your body.  The first part was interesting, detailing how the technology was invented by a doctor who lost his young son in a car accident because he couldn't get to the hospital in time. But then the book veers into all the potential bad uses, some of which were pretty farfetched.

This is the 4th Jack Reacher book (of 20). I started reading them in the middle and have been working both ways up and down the list. This is the earliest in the series I've read. It's also the worst. I obviously like the Reacher stories as I've now read 11 of them but this one I didn't like. Too much of it didn't make the least bit of sense. Would the FBI really practically kidnap Reacher to get his help and threaten to have his girlfriend murdered by a crime lord if he didn't cooperate? I doubt it.

Here is the reason I only finished 3 books in March. This monster clocked in at 948 pages. 948 pages of a complicated plot, with several interweaving stories and hard to follow concepts, with multiple twists and flashbacks. Hamilton is the master at harder than nails science fiction and I think this is his best.

Another reason I only read three books is this.

I read almost half of this before I gave up. It looked interesting in the library but it felt like it was written for a bright 8th grader not an adult who feels like he knows something about history.