december media roundup

I was able to finish up a few titles I had been putting off this week:

• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking; This recapping of modern cosmology is probably a little out of date, but is still seems like a good primer. It's a whirlwind tour of physics from a geocentric model, to the expanding universe, to string theory and beyond. I'm not sure how much I actually absorbed, and it's still difficult to really picture what a multiverse or curved spacetime really means, but nonetheless it's fun to think about.
• Children of God (Sequel to The Sparrow); I read the first in this series awhile ago and really enjoyed it. The protagonist, a priest, has everything violently taken from him. The end of The Sparrow leaves him broken in many ways, but at least functional. This sequel drags the priest back to the planet where he was tortured and tries to provide a reason for his suffering; it's unapologetically spiritual by completing his arc from faith to atheism and back to faith. I appreciated the world building and character development, but the defense of problem of evil fell flat to me, and I found I enjoyed the first two thirds of the series more than the end. Maybe I'm just cynical. ▣