Pulitzer-prize winner Carl Sagan imagines the greatest adventure of all... the discovery of an advanced civilization in the depths of space: In December 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there?

It took me a little while to get into this book. Then I got to this bit:

"She had taken to listening closely to many sources of white noise: the motor of the refrigerator starting up in the middle of the night; the water running for her bath; the washing machine when she would do her clothes in the little laundry room off her kitchen; the roar of the ocean during a brief scuba-diving trip to the island of Cozumel off Yucatan [...]. She would listen to these everyday sources of random noise and try to determine whether there were fewer apparent patterns in them than in the interstellar traffic. [...]
"This was a little eccentric, she knew. But she had always had an active fantasy life. All right, so she was a little compulsive about listening to noise. It did no harm that she could see. Nobody seemed to notice much. Anyway, it was job-related."

I felt I'd found a kindred spirit in Ellie just because of this. I listen to white noise too. Not for any scientific reason, you understand. I'm not trying to identify patterns in it. I just like noise. Static, machinery, rainfall, anything like that. It's always nice to find someone who shares your quirks in a book. (Provided that the book you're reading isn't, I dunno, American Psycho or something.)

After that it really drew me in. It's such an intelligent, reasonable, optimistic book (almost too optimistic in parts). I should read more books like this and less of that "black humour" that I'm so fond of. Didn't like the ending, though.

This will shortly be on its way to perfect-circle, who picked it from the 1001 Books VBB at BookObsessed.com.

On its way to perfect-circle by second class post.

OK, this came ages ago and disappeared onto the table of doom to await journalling. It is here and I will be reading it fairly soon. Thanks for sending it on shnedwards!