Ok, so, I finally finished the latest installment of A Song of Fire and Ice

That pretty much wore me out. But I have started a new epic -- Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth.

Of course, Follett has no chance of rivaling Martin for scope or spectacle, and I'm not entirely persuaded by the 3rd person omniscient POV so far, but I'm starting to get into the story. Like with a Disney film (uhh, except for John Carter, which I saw on Sunday with The Boy), at least one parent has to die in the opening scenes or already be dead. Oh, wait, John Carter was "dead" in the opening scene. Check that box.

Back to Follett. Yes, poor Tom Builder's wife gets offed within the first 50 pages or so. Which is about where I am. Surely, Follett won't set ol' Tom up as the hero of the story and then G.o.T. him at the end of the next act, right?

I also managed to read a chapter or so of Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, his 1986 masterpiece in defense of full-metal jacket, no holds barred evolutionary theory. If you care about the culture war struggles between the "intelligent design" folks and the mainstream of biology education, this book is an indispensable resource for understanding where the hardest of the hardcore evolutionary theorists are coming from. Fair warning: Dawkins is downright disdainful of both I.D. and, more generally, religion (a viewpoint that comes out even more strongly in his 2006 book, The God Delusion). But he also is a literate and nimble defender of the scientific method and of evolutionary biology. Perhaps most pertinently for this audience, Dawkins is responsible for the term meme.

What are you reading?