The Groom to Have Been by Saher Alam

This was the first of five books I bought for our trip to Aruba. I bought it from the 2-for-1 table at Borders, and I think I had heard about it on NPR. I finished this on our first day of vacation. It was pretty well written and kept my attention.

The book was about a Muslim Indian who grew up in Canada. He is reasonably assimilated into Canadian (and American) culture but agrees to let his parents arrange his marriage. Just when he begins all the preparations for his marriage, he begins to see a family friend in a different light and wonders if he should be with her instead.

I didn't find the book that different from other similarly-themed books I've read. About forty pages from the end, I thought to myself, "he could end up with either girl and it would not be unpredictable." But I enjoyed learning a bit more about Muslim Indians, and Alam added a tasteful backdrop of 9/11 to the story that I appreciated. A good read, but nothing unusually special.

Flash Forward by Robert Sawyer

I was unexpectedly downtown and decided to try Wagamama for dinner. Not wanting to eat alone, I popped into Borders and picked this book up for company. I still have not read the third book in Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, but Borders didn't have it.

Flash Forward was as good as Sawyer's other books. It was a quick read with interesting plot, a little romance, and compelling characters. The book is about a phenomenon that a group of scientists cause accidentally. The phenomenon brings everyone in the world forward twenty years and gives them a short view of their lives then returns them to the present. The majority of the book focuses on how each of the main character copes with knowing where they think they'll be in twenty years.

Again, Sawyer has written a fun book, sci-fi only incidentally. It was less social commentary and more commentary on controlling our own destinies. Either way, enjoyable.