Diary: books + Clare's health

Not many posts for the next few days as we have a visitor: my 'study' reverts to its ur-status as bedroom.

I ordered Sean Carroll's book (which should be arriving tomorrow or Saturday) ..

.. on account that one reviewer (3 stars) complained it was 'too hard'. I'll try to let you know.

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Strange how hard it is to predict another's taste in books. I really appreciated Scott Bakker's "The Disciple of the Dog" but all that inline philosophy slowed it down way too much for Clare.

It's been replaced - amazingly - by the famous "The Mote in God's Eye" which she is lapping up as I read it to her.

We haven't even reached the gripping alien lightsail contact event yet; still in the early chapters of Niven's and Pournelle's backstory building, usually condemned as 'boring'.

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I remain a fan of Scott Bakker and have purchased (Kindle) this: (start of a mega-epic) ..

.. which seems awfully complicated. I have dipped my toe in.

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My third ordered volume is "The Genome Factor: What the Social Genomics Revolution Reveals About Ourselves, Our History, and the Future" by Dalton Conley and Jason Fletcher.

I'm hyper-wary of the fluffy-bunny pleasantries of the Standard Social Science Model, but it seems well-regarded so I'm taking the risk. Should be out some time in late February.

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Do you hear that hacking cough from the bedroom? Clare is much recovered today but the sub-zero windchill of our lunchtime shopping trip to Waitrose has sapped her energy .. and she has retired to bed. Still, direction of progress is positive.

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Well, enough time here. I think it's time to re-acquaint myself with J. A Robinson's exemplary treatment of unification with those substitution subtleties ... .