Bookish Thoughts

It's always nice to revisit a book and discover that it's every bit as good as you remember it. Maybe even better. It's been nearly a decade since I first read The Sparrow  and it's sequel, but it's stuck with me over the years. It's dense and powerful and there's a lot to mull over. I've been meaning to revisit it for years, and I finally convinced my book club to read it last month, which gave me the motivation to finally pick it back up. This time, I knew where everything was going from the beginning. And it gave me a deeper appreciation for the structure and pacing and foreshadowing of the book. It really is a masterpiece, using the mystery to drag the reader through the slower beginning and then ramping up at the end. I also enjoyed discussing it with my book club this time. A lot of them are way more familiar with the bible than I am, so they pointed out a lot of references that I missed. It was neat to get a different perspective on the book, ...

Children of God  is the sequel to Mary Doria Russell's debut novel, The Sparrow .  In The Sparrow  mankind discovered intelligent life on Rakhat, a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, and launched a mission to go and study the life there. Children of God  deals with the aftermath of that mission, which sparked a revolution on Rakhat. There are two sentient species living on Rakhat, one carnivorous (the Jana'ata) and one herbivorous (the Runa). The Jana'ata used the Runa for everything, from labor to food.  They controlled when they could breed and who they could breed with.  They also monitored they're own population quite closely, at roughly 4% of the Runa population. Of course, when the humans learned about these strict breeding policies, they were appalled.  And they incited the Runa to revolution. Children of God  follows the aftermath of this.  How the revolution plays out and what it's consequences are. Parallel to th...

The Sparrow  is about humanity's first encounter with extraterrestrial life. The Sparrow  is about the meeting, blending, and clashing of two cultures. The Sparrow  is about the frontier spirit that pushes us to always explore. The Sparrow  is about a group of people coming together to form a family. The Sparrow  is about one man's struggle to find God, and his despair at what he finds. The Sparrow  is about tragedies that result from miscommunication. The Sparrow  is about sacrifice and love. The Sparrow  is a rich, important book, and you should read it. In the year 2019, humanity discovers intelligent life on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. While the UN is arguing over whether it's worth sending people to a planet over 4 lightyears away, the Vatican quickly and privately pulls it's own mission together.  And so four Jesuit priests, a physician, an engineer, an astronomer, and a computer scientist embark on an a...