Book!

Finished a book today, "Darwin's Children," by Greg Bear (see links in my previous blog entries). The book is a sequel to Bear's novel "Darwin's Radio," which is about human evolution facilitated by viruses. In the original book, a generation of children are born who are "different." Stronger sense of smell, more control over skin pigmentation, both of which are used by the children in communication.

The new book picks up 12 years after the original book, meeting the children when they are in their early adolecence. The goverment in the US has rounded up many of the "virus children," and placed them in special "schools" (read, concentration camps), due to the fear by many of the "normal" humans to this new breed.

Without going into the details of the book, I did enjoy the time spent reading the book. However, I also felt that the book seemed to be a bit scanty on filling details of the story, or certain levels of characterization. I did not read the first book right before starting this one, so perhaps I would have had a better experience had I done so. However, I didn't, so my experience is what it is.

The story jumped from place to place very quickly, which usually does not bother me in books, but there wasn't a lot of explanation as to what was going on in the story. There seemed to be a lot of political issues coming up in the background of the novel, and I would have liked to know more about those, but I didn't get it. None of this would keep me from reading any of Bear's new novels, though, as he still generally tells a good story. I probably would wait for the paperback, as I did with this one.

In other news, I took the day off from work today. Slept till about 10am, then did some grocery shopping, updated genealogy stuff, listened to music, watched some Aqua Teen Hunger Force, finished the aforementioned book, and spent some time with Sue. All in all, a good day away from work.

While listening to music off of my computer today, my old song "Forever" came up on the mp3 docket. It's quite an enjoyable little ditty, if I say so myself. If I re-recorded it today, I'd put some nice drums to it, and probably a bit more biting guitar, doubling the ascending lines the bass does through parts of the song.

The new book I'm reading is "The Blind Watchmaker," by Richard Dawkins, a British biologist. Only 12 pages into it, so no real opinion on the content yet, although Dawkins has rarely if ever disappointed this reader.

I may record some guitar parts tonight for the music I've been working on. Last night, I determined that I may want to play the guitar a bit differently for the song. More like the guitar in "Roxanne" by The Police. We'll see how it works tonight, should I do the recording. I'm going to wait till later to do any work on it, as Mr. Johnston may be giving a call a bit later.

NP: Attack of the Clones Soundtrack; Bounty Hunter's Pursuit