Books
grrlscientist | December 30, 2008tags: books, meme, five books I wish I'd never read, book review
Here's a meme that is a little bit different from the usual sorts because it is a negative meme. I usually celebrate all the wonderful books I read and review on my blog, but there are some books that I wish I had never invested the time into finishing. In spite of my "100 page rule" where I stop reading a book at page 100 if I still dislike it at that point, I sometimes finish books that I really really wish I had simply "lost" on the subway when I had the chance (I think "rehoming" books is the correct way to deal with…
laelaps | December 30, 2008
Shortly after my wife and I were married in the summer of 2006, but before our apartment was lined with overstocked bookshelves, we used to make at least one weekly stop at the local public library. While she browsed a wide array of sections, I invariably scaled the back staircase to the science section on the second floor. The question was not whether I wanted to read a science book, but which one.
One of the first I picked up was Stephen Jay Gould's essay collection The Lying Stones of Marrakech. Rightly or wrongly, I recognized him as the voice of evolutionary science, a topic that had…
sa smith | December 29, 2008An unfortunate side effect of grad school is that I have had zero spare time for reading. I mean, sure Ive got several hours a day to read papers, but I mean fun reading.
Well this past week I took a nice break from work/school/writing and I totally binged.
Seven books in seven days.
I read the entire Sookie Stackhouse box-set (still havent read the newest one), since I got drawn into the HBO series it was based on, True Blood (LUV ANNA PAQUIN!).
Holy crap you guys.
So good.
Sooooo friggen good!
They arent *just* vampire books-- theyre mystery novels that just happen to include vampires.…
sciencewoman | December 28, 2008I have a dream that one day, academics--both men and women--will be able to take time to go the mountain top--or just the hill in the local park, or even a slope on campus--and cherish watching their toddlers roll down, confident that their careers aren't rolling downhill with them. I have a dream that academics will take the wisdom they gain from fostering their children's development back to their intellectual work, and feel confident that their community admires them for doing so. I have a dream that the stalled revolution will jump-start one day, that all women and men, whatever their…
laelaps | December 28, 2008I have to admit that one of my favorite targets of criticism is the "Dinosauroid," which I have previously mentioned on this blog multiple times (with the more detailed treatments here, here, and here). Even though paleontologist Dale Russell and taxidermist Ron Sequin stated that their hypothetical being might bear a little orthogenic bias, it was nonetheless presented a plausible hypothesis of what dinosaurs might have become had they not gone extinct. (Mind you, this predated the consensus that some dinosaurs still exist today; we just call them birds).
Perhaps, but the creature is so…
gregladen | December 25, 2008Did you get a gift card for a bookstore from Santa? Consider this new item (Thanks Virgil Samms for the tip!): Mrs. Charles Darwin's Recipe Book: Revived and Illustrated
A cookbook based on notes by Charles Darwin's wife is to be published.
Mrs Charles Darwin's Recipe Book features more than 40 dishes from her personal cookery notebook, which is housed in Cambridge University Library.
Turnip cresselly, broiled mushrooms, cheese straws and baked apple pudding all feature in the Victorian notes. ... (bbc)
laelaps | December 21, 2008
If you have never heard of sexual selection, if "evo-devo" sounds like the name of an 80's new wave band, if you believe in evolution but don't understand it, Jerry Coyne's forthcoming book Why Evolution is True isn't a bad place to kick off your intellectual journey. There is no one book that can encompass everything that is important to understand about evolution, but Why Evolution is True makes an admirable attempt at surveying the intertwining lines of evidence scientists follow to determine how life came to be as it is. Indeed, Coyne's book follows in the long tradition of popular books…
laelaps | December 21, 2008My wife and I have our own little Christmas tradition; every year I read Terry Pratchett's The Hogfather aloud in the week leading up to the holiday. I had mixed feelings about the film adaptation, but I did enjoy this particular scene (which I coincidentally just got to today in the book);
grrlscientist | December 21, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
ddobbs | December 19, 2008Micheal Nielsen gets swiftly to a problem many scientists (and not a few writers) have with Gladwell's books -- and highlights their redeeming factors as well:
All three of Malcolm Gladwell's books pose a conundrum for the would-be reviewer. The conundrum is this: while the books have many virtues, none of the books make a watertight argument for their central claims. Many scientists, trained to respect standards of proof above all else, don't like this style. A colleague I greatly respect told me he thought Gladwell's previous book, Blink , was "terrible"; it didn't meet his standards of…
pharyngula | December 19, 2008Now someone else is giving away a free book to commenters — it's like Christmas or something. Leave a comment at Domestic Father and maybe you'll win a copy of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which is a really good deal, since that book isn't yet available in the US, and I've been itching to get my hands on it for a while.
I was tempted not to tell you all, just to improve my chances of winning, but altruism won out.
pharyngula | December 18, 2008It's easy — just follow the link from The Countess's blog, read about weird supernatural monsters, leave a comment, and you're entered in a drawing for an anthology of erotic horror stories.
Yeah, erotic horror. I think it's supposed to leave you all hot and bothered in a state of tension … not erotic horror like retelling a woman's sexual history in a church service, which is horrifying in an "eww, ick" and "cover the children's ears, Martha!" and "ooooh, Harold, I come over all tremulous just thinking about it" sort of way. Sanctimonious dunderheads need not apply.
laelaps | December 18, 2008
Many science bloggers, myself included, have plans to write a book. Of that creative pool few actually bind their ideas in a volume and get it onto shelves, but new self-publishing services like lulu.com have made it easier for writers to publish and sell their books. This service allowed Ed to bring us the best of Not Exactly Rocket Science, the Digital Cuttlefish to collect its poetry in ink, and Blake Stacey to bring us his new SF novel Until Earthset. Here is the synopsis;
1968.
The Protectorate has fallen.
The nation of Andalus is rebuilding after a bloody civil war, their efforts…
cmooney | December 17, 2008In the latest issue of the American Prospect magazine, I've got a lengthy, essay-style review of two recent books on global warming: The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing The Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate, by David Archer of RealClimate.org and the University of Chicago; and Forecast: The Consequences Of Climate Change, From The Amazon To The Arctic, From Darfur To Napa Valley, by Stephan Faris of the Atlantic.
You can't read the full review sans subscription, but it opens like this:
"Timescale" is a word one hears regularly from climate scientists like the University of Chicago's…
laelaps | December 17, 2008
I haven't written any book reviews in a while, primarily because I have not had the time, but when I was offered a review copy of Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True I couldn't resist. It is slated to be one of the first titles out of the gate in 2009, the Year of Evolution, and many similar books are due to be released to commemorate the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.
I am sad to say, however, that I hope Coyne's book does not represent the best of what we can expect next year. While the book is not without its virtues, at…
gregladen | December 16, 2008 The Time Traveler's Wife This is an easy decision, and not only because I read about five pieces of fiction this year and most of them were pulp. Well, OK, that is a factor. But this book is good enough for me to blog about it and you know I only blog about important things that you need to know about.
The book is The Time Traveler's Wife and it is by Audrey Niffenegger. Have you heard of it?
Apparently they are making this into a movie, which I suppose is a good thing. But it is the detail and complexity that makes this an exceptional story, and this will not come through in the…
grrlscientist | December 14, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
ddobbs | December 9, 2008
INTERVIEWER
Could you say something of this process? When do you work? Do you keep to a strict schedule?
HEMINGWAY
When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and you know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day…
ddobbs | December 8, 2008A few that rolled away with the tide ...
PsychCentral not impressed with Outliers
Look Who's in the Operating Room
From the Deutches Museum, tractors as core culture
And from Boing Boing, a Studley tool chest. And I was all excited to get my little canvas toolbag yesterday.
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drorzel | December 8, 2008In comments to last week's rant about the low esteem in which science is held, taffe writes:
Ok then, what should scientists be doing, individually or as a community? Maybe the masses just plain find political info more interesting. I mean hell, you had to use dog fans as a hook for your popular book, right?
One of the maddening things about blogging as a medium is the way its ephemerality leads to repetition. I feel like I've written this before, but it's unreasonable for me to be peeved about it, because there's no reason why anybody commenting last week would've seen the earlier post. So…