Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
2009 Lammies: Finalists
The finalists for the Lambda Literary Foundation's 21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards have been announced. As their publicity notes, "this year 105 finalists representing 72 publishers are competing for awards in 22 categories." I wanted to draw your attention to these two finalists: Kinsey Zero through Sixty: Bisexual Perspectives on Kinsey. edited […]
In: All, Books, Faaabulosity, Personal Notebook
On Reading The Little Ice Age
Earlier this year I read the book Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History 1300 – 1850, by Brian Fagan (New York : Basic Books, 2000; 246 pages). He takes a close look at the relatively cool period between the "Medieval Warm Period" and the current warming period, and considers in […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
A Murmuration
For a couple of months I kept track of a Language Log article about "talking" starlings (Mark Liberman, "Vocal mimicry on the web", Language Log, 1 November 2008), not so much for all the interesting scholarship on vocal mimicry contained therein, but because of the amusing video that reminded me of something, a tiny missed […]
In: All, Books, Curious Stuff, The Art of Conversation
Doing Some Twenty on Ninety
Recently I read Bunny Crumpacker's* Perfect Figures : The Lore of Numbers and How we Learned to Count (New York : St. Martin's Press, 2007, 271 pages). I never quite decided whether I liked it or not, but I rather enjoyed the reading of it. Mostly it was engaging, but the style took me a […]
Don't Forget the Ligatures!
This morning I was reading my current mystery book, David Handler's The Sour Cherry Surprise. I'm enjoying it. It's published by St. Martin's Minotaur (2008, 230 pages). Right now I need to have a brief word with the publisher. Typeface ligatures were invented for a reason. You have them at your disposal–use them! This morning […]
In: All, Books, Feeling Peevish
Ambiguous Praise & Extrapolation
I have no idea why it took me so long to read it when it was available from before my birth, but it's only last week that I picked up and read Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics (New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 1954/1993. 142 pages, illustrated by Irving Geis). It's a good, […]
In: All, Books, Laughing Matters
Beard of the Week LVIII: The Big Oyster
This week's beard belongs to Mark Kurlansky, celebrated author of Salt and a number of other books. In fact, one of those other books is my subject at hand or, perhaps, at chin. (Photograph by Sylvia Plachy, which I took from this citation for the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Nonfiction given to Kurlansky.) […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books, Food Stuff
Kinsey Zero through Sixty
I'm sure I mentioned before the story that I wrote about a year ago for my friend, occasional co-author, and frequent editor Ron Suresha. The story, an episodic "biography" of a copy of the Kinsey Report during it's (so far) sixty-year life, is called "Between Red Covers" (a title that refers to the original book […]
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook
Nostalgic Travel
Powered by a flight of nostalgia I have revisited the remarkable and virtually unknown Mushroom Planet.* In my youth my bibliophilic tendencies were awakened by two significant influences: 1) my cub-scout den mother who was the one who introduced me to the public library (as an idea, via the actual instance in Kansas City, KS), […]
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook
On Reading The Carbon Age
I recently finished reading The Carbon Age : How Life's Core Element has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat, by Eric Roston (New York : Walker & Company, 2008. 308 pages). I very much enjoyed the act of reading it, but it was only when I was writing about it that I realized that is really an […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
On Hydrogen (& Physics Humor)
I recently finished reading the book Hydrogen : The Essential Element, by John S. Rigden (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2002. vii + 280 pages). Here's my book note. It's a book I can recommend. As I mentioned in the book note, the "hydrogen" of this book is the physicist's "hydrogen",* the simple atom […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Beard of the Week LIV: Waters of Thirst
This week's beard belongs to British writer Adam Mars-Jones (b. 1954); I haven't yet identified the terrier (despite the fact that they seem to be always depicted together / photo source). Mars-Jones has a large literary reputation for an author with — until now — a surprisingly small output of fiction. I know him for […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books, Faaabulosity
McCain's Dangerous Science Illiteracy
At the most recent presidential so-called "debate" (that would be debate #2, the "town hall meeting" format), John McCain, trying to score cheap points against rival Barack Obama, referred to earmark money Obama voted for that included "$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois". Of course, as many of us […]
In: Books, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!
Read a Banned Book
Every year, in the last week of September, the American Library Association sponsors "Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read". The freedom to read is on many people's minds these days. We just finished listening to the end of the Biden / Palin debate. I still think Palin is a dolt and dangerous believer […]
On Reading Wood's How Fiction Works
I recently read How Fiction Works, by James Wood (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 265 pages). It was a surprisingly rewarding book to have read, so I wanted to tell you about it and quote a few passages. Like, I suspect, many writers of fiction do, I occasionally succumb to reading yet another book about […]
Beard of the Week XLVI: Far from Kansas
The week's BoW entry is a special treat and a BoW first: a guest entry written by Mel, The Indextrious Reader and friend of this blog. Thanks Mel! This week's beard belongs to artist Virgil Burnett (born in Kansas in 1928). A real Renaissance man, he began his career as a student at Columbia University […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books
The Majestic Unity of the Natural World
Awhile back I was doing my lunchtime reading in the very interesting book The two-mile time machine : ice cores, abrupt climate change, and our future, by Richard B. Alley. In short, the book is about deep ice cores taken from the ice cap in Greenland and the incredible amount of information they give us […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science, Reflections
Beard of the Week XLIII: Let's Make a Deal
This week's beard belongs to David Flannery, a lecturer in mathematics at the Cork Institute of Technology, Cork, Ireland. He is shown with his daughter Sarah Flannery, author of the book In Code : A Mathematical Journey (New York : Workman Publishers, 2001); David Flannery is listed as her coauthor. The book is a fascinating, […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books
Beard of the Week XLII: The Pyramidiot
This week's beard belongs to one Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), who served as Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888. That's not the reason for my interest, however. It's his pioneering work in pyramidology that I found out about today and wanted to bring to your attention. At the center of it all: the […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books, Curious Stuff
Update: Science-Book Challenge 2008
The year–that would be 2008, if memory serves–is now half over so it seemed like a good time for me to give a brief update on the official Ars Hermeneutica "Science-Book Challenge 2008". I am pleased to report ample success at the same time I can note the year is only half over and anyone […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science