52 Books, Week 31: Contact

Hmmm. So I was going to write about officially hitting the middle class, as I finally bought some pants from banana republic that weren't on sale... Instead, I decided to forge ahead with the books.

Why: When I was studying abroad I met this kid who never got to watch tv growing up. In casual conversation, he mentioned how he read like a billion books because he was constantly bored out of his mind. Blah, blah, blah, so eventually we got to talking about Contact which is one of my favorite movies of all time He said that there were some pretty significant differences between the book and the movie, so I decided to put it on my list.

Should You: If you're into science fiction, I would recommend this one. Actually, even if you're not into science fiction, I'd recommend this one. If intergalactic/space travel isn't really you're thing, Contact probably isn't gonna get you into it, but its really well-written. Carefully, the book examines religion and science via a pretty interesting story about a mysterious space message. Some of the seocndary themes about human competitiveness and geopolitics are also engaging, but Sagan never crosses the line into preachiness. All in all, pretty good fiction.