"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood

Considering that this is a dystopian novel, I enjoyed it far more than I expected, because it is filled with great ideas. There was a safe intellectual distance between myself and the narrator, snowman/Jimmy, so that I was not saddened when Crake destroyed civilization with his spliced virus.    The book ends with Jimmy battling an infected foot, likely unsuccessfully, and spying on 3 bedraggled human stragglers. Will Crake's supremely placid creations survive... that is the question.

"Half-Blood Blues" by Esi Edugyan

I definitely did not enjoy this book about black jazz musicians in wartime Europe and beyond, including Poland. It contained a lot of ugliness and too many references to music for my taste. The narrator never reached me on a personal level. Though it was interesting to learn that society used to keep people in zoos.