Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown

A friend of mine loaned me this book and predicted that I'd be finished with it in less than 3 days. He was absolutely correct! I couldn't put this book down, it swallowed up most of my weekend.

It tells of a symbologist who is woken early in the morning about a murder. This begins his adventure that brings him face to face with the Illuminati, anti-matter, and the head officials of the Vatican. Murder, mystery, secrecy, of course this book was wonderfully suspenseful.

Brown chose to take a lot of real information (on the Illuminati, Vatican, old texts...) and use it in the book, so even after you finish this book you're ready to jump into more definitive research into these enthralling subjects.

Good book. It's the prequel to The DaVinci Code, and it's probably best if you read this one first (the outcome of this book is made fairly clear when you start reading DaVinci Code).

Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert J. Heinlein

This is the third of Heinlein's books I've read, and I definately think this is my favorite so far. It tells the story of a man who was born and orphaned on Mars, and then raised by Martians. Martians are an advanced civilization compared to ours, and when the young man, Michael, is finally "rescued" by fellow earthlings, he is brought back to Earth, where he can barely speak the language. But as a genius, he quickly adapts and begins to "grok" what humanity is all about.

I think I loved this book so much because it touched upon religion a lot, and I've been doing a lot of exploring myself, and found myself agreeing in many portions of this book. I also found the characters very easy to fall in love with, the book flowed very nicely, and no parts dragged at all, which I think is rare for a 500+ book that is actually GOOD (rather than some sort of pop suspense novel).

Definately a book that every scifi fan should take time and read.