Books in September

Still working my way through the Niven catalog. First was the Niven/Pournelle/Barnes sequel to The Legacy of Heorot, Beowulf's Children. Not quite as "this should be a movie" as the first book, but the fact that this felt more novel-like is a good thing. My only quibble: I wasn't buying the evolved, more intelligent grendel conceiving of a grendel god. Deities are such social constructs, I don't see how or why a solitary animal would create one, or feel the need to create one. That aside, it was a killer story.

In the Niven and Barnes sans Pournelle category, I read Dream Park and its sequel The Barsoom Project. These were both awesome too. In these books and the two above, the women characters feel so much more real and complete in a way I don't find them in books just by Niven or Niven and Pournelle that I'm beginning to suspect I might be a bit of a Steven Barnes fan. I'll have to add his name to the list of writers I plan to read up on.

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. What can I say? I just found one of the spines for my high school biology curriculum. This book is amazing. Part of my reason for homeschooling my boys was the way public schools tiptoe around evolution. They mention it (which is enough to piss off certain people), but they never actually teach it, what it is, how it works, and most of all the wealth of evidence we have for it. This book does all those things, and Dawkins with his wit is such a pleasure to read. My own understanding of evolution is mainly from the medical end, genetics and comparative anatomy, so the chapters on geology and fossils I found particularly informative. I've never really read up on all that before, and it is dead interesting. I highly, highly recommend this one. I don't know how anyone could look at life this way and not be overwhelmed with awe and wonder at how it all works. We live in an amazing world.

Lastly, A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi by Michael J. Shapiro. I've actually been working on this one for a while. It starts assuming no knowledge of Hindi and then builds to a level I found to be just about where Teach Yourself Hindi ends, so it was perfect for me. It contains a selection of snippets from actual readers used in schools in India, little stories about the gardens of Kashmir, or folk tales, even the opening of Alice in Wonderland all in Hindi. There was also a thorough discussion of the grammar. I'm such a grammar geek sentences like "It is possible to arrange a number of the most common Hindi adverbial forms into a highly systematic paradigm" actually make me swoon a little.

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But I suppose that's just me.