javajinny Female, 28, Married. Jacksonville, FL, USA

Grains of Golden Sand is a captivating book about bonobos (a kind of chimp) and Delfi Messinger's time in Zaire in the late 80's and early 90's (notably during the military riots and looting of '91 and '93). Delfi works at the Jacksonville Zoo were I attended a lecture she gave on bonobos and her time in Africa. She was so fascinating that I bought her book to learn more.

The book reads like a novel; it is that enthralling. The reader learns how she fended off looters from the multi-million dollar institute she was working at with her wits alone. An example: she wrote SIDA (AIDS in French) in sheeps blood on the wall of the building to scare looters away. Another, funnier, example: there was a gap in the fencing so she parked her truck to block it; to keep it from getting stolen she put the institute's giant python in the cab.

Check out the book, it's available on Amazon and other sites. It's worth the read alone to learn more about bonobos. If you've never heard of the primate, it's probably because they're so endangered there are only 6 zoos in the country that have them.

This is probably the strangest book I've ever read. In the future, we've beaten death. A person can be cloned in 2 days and their mind downloaded from their last backup. So whenever you die, you're just created again with all your old memories and emotions. If that's not weird enough, the technology of Disney World is so outdated, people actually live there to maintain eveything so that people looking for a nostalgic trip back in time can ride the old rides.
It takes a little while for the book to get going, but once it does it really takes off. With a great twist at the end, this book is really the sci-fi for the non-sci-fi reader.