Books I Have Been Reading: GEB and Foundling

Hello ATA. It has been a long while since I posted here, but non-the-less, I felt like sharing a little. I cannot promise that I will be back to respond to comments, but we shall see.

Two books I have finish in the past months are: Godel, Escher, Bach (GEB) [Wikipedia] (by Douglas Hofstadter) and Foundling [Wikipedia] (by D. M. Cornish). While they are completely different (maybe the only similarities are they both were in English, and bound in soft cover), I would recommend both of them, but perhaps to different audiences.

The first, GEB, is a tomb of a book that talks about, primarily, the inter-connectivity of field of knowledge, such as Music and Math, or Genetics and Logical systems. It speaks primarily of communication, storage, and rigorous definition of knowledge. It was written in the 1970's, so his theories about computers are sometimes a bit dated, however, the way he approached the topic is still interesting. This intensely intellectual book is not for the faint of heart… I took me nearly eight month to finish (not that that was the only book that I was reading). I first heard of the book from Mr. Britch, who quite liked it, for good reason. The author does a fantastic job of connecting many fields of knowledge, in an understandable, interesting way.

The second book, Foundling, by D.M. Cornish, was a great book as well. This I would highly recommend it to those who like fantasy/sci-fi novels. The author's first book, Foundling takes place in a painstakingly detailed world, quite different from our own. (The world is populated by "monsters" and humans, who fight for land, with chemical "potives"… I cannot give it its due at all, my apologies for this attempt) The reality with which the world is constructed makes the book gripping in it self. If that was not enough, the tail that is woven intrigues the reader. I have now read the second book in the Trilogy, and am starting the third, and I remain quite enthralled. One slightly strange thing I notices was the feel that throughout the book something more was going to happen… and it never did. While the story is geared to the YA or J groups, adults would still enjoy it, but it might be a little scary for those of the younger disposition (but not that bad at all).