Let's face it, most of my weeks begin the same way that they end; with a whimper. However, today was different. As some of you know, I love reading and recently, I have been publishing book reviews on my blog. Considering all the limitation$ on my life during these past few years, requesting review copies of certain titles has been the only way I have devised whereby I can obtain at least some of those newly published books about birds, science and nature that I dearly wish to read. Well, without having to fight for the same priviledge with all the other unemployed people hanging out at the library.
One problem with borrowing books from the library is that I have to return them. I hate doing this because after I've finished reading a good book, it has been transformed into my late night companion, my subway storyteller, my constant friend, always ready to go anywhere and everywhere with me at a time when I am otherwise alone. So returning books to the library after we've shared so much feels like an abandonment, a loss.
So this week started out with a "bang" in the literary sense because I checked my mail this morning and found I'd received not one, not two, but three new books to review. Clean, crisp, fresh .. waiting for their pages to be touched with gentle fingers, waiting to reveal their innermost secrets to wondering eyes, waiting for their prose and their ideas to be discovered like an unknown continent. Christmas in April.
The books I received today include;
Club George: The diary of a Central Park birdwatcher by Bob Levy (Thomas Dunne Books). The author was interviewed last week on WNYC radio, which is how I learned about this book.
The Bird Flu Pandemic by Jeffrey Greene, with Karen Moline (Thomas Dunne Books). The publicity agent at Dunne Books kindly asked me if I would also like to review this book. Since I already have published several opinion pieces about avian influenza here, I told him, Yes! Of course!
Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding by Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen (Eagle Mountain Publishing). A long-time friend of mine, an art lover, emailed me a few weeks ago to rave about this book.
So today, as I finish reading several other books that I will be reviewing here, I am faced with a dilemma that I have often wished for in these past two years; choices, pleasant choices. Which one to read first?
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Might I offer a suggestion?
All kidding aside, I'm happy to learn that you got a review copy.
Do you have a wanna-book list somewhere on your site? Some of the other bloggers I read are without inhibition in appealing to their respective publics for reading matter.
I agree with biosparite, you really should post a wish list. You'd be surprised by how many people are willing to buy you books.
I recommend THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PLANET EARTH by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. If you want a true sense of the fragility of life on earth, contemplate that the sun will be radiating so much in 500 My that higher land life will become impossible; the oceans will be boiling at 1 Gy in the future. I collect 455 My-old fossils every time I am in Virginia, so I have a benchmark of sorts to evaluate numbers like that.
i do have a long, long list of books i want on amazon, but i don't think it's publically accessible.
thanks for the book recommendation, biosparite. i own several of peter ward's books and in fact, i actually know him. he was a professor at my university when i was a grad student, and we were drinking pals.