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The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Midwest Book Review
The Sparrow is the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a twenty-first century scientific mission to a newly discovered extraterrestrial culture. Sandoz and his companions are prepared to endure isolation, hardship and death, but nothing can prepare them for the civilization they encounter, or for the tragic misunderstanding that brings the mission to a catastrophic end. Once considered a living saint, Sandoz returns alone to Earth physically and spiritually maimed, the mission's sole survivor, only to be accused of heinous crimes and blamed for the mission's failure. In clean, effortless prose and with captivating flashes of wit, Mary Russell creates memorable characters who navigate the world of exciting ideas and disturbing moral issues without ever losing their humanity or humor. The Sparrow is immediately engaging and very memorable reading!
From Booklist
When readers meet Father Emilio Sandoz, he's a wreck, inside and out. His hands are maimed, his body bruised; he suffers from scurvy, anemia, and spiritual devastation. The year is 2059. Although Jesuit missionaries thrive on suffering, something particularly dire has happened to this skilled linguist. Four decades earlier, he proposed an expedition to discover the sentient beings whose strange yet beautiful music had been detected by radio telescope. As the only survivor of this spiritual odyssey to Alpha Centauri (the star system four light years from Earth), Sandoz was found dazed and filled with terror by rescuers who inferred that he had resorted to prostitution to stay alive. Returned to the Jesuit Order, Sandoz is forced to face truths about the godless alien societies on the planet Rakhat that he and his colleagues grew to know, love, and perish at the claws of. Miscommunications, misplaced trust, and tiny mistakes led to their downfall. The dense prose in this complex tale may at first seem off-putting, but hang on for the ride; it's riveting! Russell's first novel is also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection

This book was lent to me recently. It is rather long at 405 pages, but I never noticed the length while reading it. I'm not saying it is never slow, but it is a wonderfully interesting book that takes a variety of interesting concepts on linguistics, anthropology and science and then adds a rather beautiful search to understand faith. Whether you don't believe in the divine or are a committed Catholic, the questions raised in this book are really curious.

House of the Scorpion By Nancy Farmer

Amazon.com
Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting the juice. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks, are done by "eejits," humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure docility. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared because he belongs to El Patron. He grows up in the family's mansion, alternately caged and despised as an animal and pampered and educated as El Patron's favorite. Gradually he realizes the fate that is in store for him, and with the help of Tam Lin, his bluff and kind Scottish bodyguard, he escapes to Aztlan. There he and other "lost children" are trapped in a more subtle kind of slavery before Matt can return to Opium to take his rightful place and transform his country.

Suggestion? Well because this IS book of the month maybe it should be new books released from the prior month or so? xd Just a thought, because if we just do any book all I'll mainly see are classics. mrgreen