The Family

I obviously miss my books. My books are all packed. The majority of them have been packed for over 2 years. All of them are now in climate controlled storage. I miss my books.

Well … Fort Collins opened a new library within walking distance of us. It opened when we were in the midst of moving decisions, but now that we’re settled in the new temporary space – and I have no reading materials at all – we’ve been going to the library a lot.

And I have been reading like a starving person. In May, of course, I posted on the first three books I checked out. Since there, here’s what I’ve read:
The 13th Element
Anecdotes of Destiny
The Vampire Lestat
Born Standing Up
Alex & Me
The Devil You Know
Flat Earth
Wesley the Owl

Well, I’m not going to do full reviews on any of these (unless anyone is particularly interested). Just summations.

The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus
by John Emsley

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating book. Phosphorus is both necessary to life and an extremely effective poison. This meant the book was able to cover a lot of very interesting ground, chapters on the good and the bad. Starts with the discovery of phosphorus and the gradual refinements in isolating and purifying it. The first method they came up with started with boiling urine. Thousands of gallons of it. One of the first scientists did this in his backyard shed. He was married. I simply cannot imagine.

Then they covered historical uses of phosphorus, with highly disturbing chapters on match manufacture (the industrial disease associated with match making was HORRID) and incendiary bombs (the firebombing of Hamburg was gut wrenching). Final chapters on phosphorus as a fertilizer were very thought provoking. Phosphorus was used as a quack medicine, then as an effective and undetectable (for forensic science of the day) poison, and now as the base of pretty much all food production. They covered the chemistry of it in small bits scattered through all the chapters, so you could read it as a narrative with some chemistry .. or as a chemistry overview with anecdotes. (Or antidotes, depending on the chapter).

In the best tradition of popular science writing. Highly educational, but extremely interesting.

Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard
by Isak Dinesen

A collection of short stories translated from the Danish. Picked it up because one of the short stories is Babette’s Feast, which was made into a movie, and I adore the movie.

I am pleased to report that the movie was faithful to the story. Actually, the movie was extremely faithful to the story. Every scene, character; some parts nearly word for word. I think that says something about the information density of print vs movies (20 page short story = 90 minute movie). The other short stories were good – nothing quite as magical as Babette’s, but perhaps it’s because the movie was so good.

The Vampire Lestat
by Anne Rice

A friend and I swapped book readings. He read a book I recommended, I did likewise. Was a fair exchange – neither of us really cared for the books we read.

I suppose the writing style was ok. I’ve read several Anne Rice books; her style is very gothic. Which is OK if that’s what you’re in the mood for. The main character, Lestat, lent himself well to the tone. He was very gothic. Again, OK if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

I think I should stop there.

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
by Steve Martin

Really interesting. You wouldn’t know from casually watching SNL, but Steve Martin is a highly educated, articulate, thoughtful person. And he really knows how to write. This is a short biography of his stand up comedy career. It is written with a lot of comedy, as one would expect. It was a very approachable introduction to Steve Martin, with some unexpectedly thought provoking bits on the nature of humor.

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence–and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process
by Irene M. Pepperberg

Alex was an African Grey Parrot who learned language. Not just mimicry – he understood syntax and could both make and understand new sentences within novel contexts. So just the parts about the experiments and the insights gleaned and all that were fascinating. Really, really fascinating.

The book was half about the experiments themselves and half about the scientist running them. She had to go through A LOT to begin and then especially to sustain the research. It’s weird … there towards the end of Alex’s life, she was getting recognition and acceptance; just finally reaching a point where folks would listen to the results themselves. At which point the overall community just loved her. The same people who wouldn’t give her a lab space to work with. So a kind of undercurrent plot is how to survive when you’re doing something truly novel.

It made me want to learn more about the research with Alex. And it was interesting seeing where the researcher was coming from personally.

The Devil You Know
by Mike Carey

I read Robin McKinley’s blog. And she mentioned how much she enjoyed this series. So, when I saw it at the library, I picked it up.

Murder mystery. In our world, but our world where there are ghosts and such. The protagonist/narrator is an exorcist, which has about all the glamor of a pest removal service. However, in this case, it turns out that the ghost has something very important to say, and many evil bad guys who want the ghost not to say it.

Was OK. The evil bad guys unleash a succubus on him (among other things) – I think she was the most interestingly written character. She’s a sexual predator, and he managed to get the balance very right, that she’s impossibly desirable and yet about to kill you. I did like what he did with her. He actually gave her a lot of time, because – as I understand it – she’s a recurring character in the rest of the series. This is the first book, I think of 3 so far, and you could kind of pick out the characters that were going to show up again. Not that that the others were slighted.

It was good enough. The evil bad guys were doing very evil things, and that was uncomfortable. But I think, given the right mood and availability, that I’d read other books in the series.

Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea
by Christine Garwood

What a fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and extremely disturbing book.

She starts with some of the popular misconceptions of a flat earth belief, namely, the Christopher Columbus thing. From about the 5th to the 15th century, belief in a globe was widespread (at least among the published histories). In all that time, there are 2 whole people who wrote anything proposing a flat earth. But, you see, those 2 folks happened to be Christian monks. So, round about the 18th century, those Enlightenment folks were trying to make this case that Reason was triumphing over Religion, and that Religion of those past Dark Ages had led people to believe unbelievably stupid things, like that the world was flat, and they cited those 2 guys. And then this fellow, true crusader or marketing genius, took that argument and made it into a public revival capturing the angst of the world changing too fast, the backlash of Religion over Reason, and said that actually, the world really was flat, just like the Bible said .. and that’s where the beginning of this Flat Earth belief came from. From now! Recent!

Total failure of science education. I was so depressed after reading it.

She closed with a survey of Americans wherein less than half of all respondents knew that the planet revolved around the sun once a year. About 20 percent said that the sun revolves around the earth. This was a recent survey.

Really extremely interesting and challenging book.

Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl
by Stacey O’Brien

This was an amazingly sweet and touching book.

She’s a biologist, working with owls, and gets the chance to raise a barn owl. He’s only a few days old when she adopts him, but there’s trauma to a wing that means he’ll never survive in the wild. So she raises him. And loves him and studies him and is delighted by him.

It was just a sweet story, nothing too much more than that. But that was sufficient. It is on my amazon list. And if I find it in a used book store along the way, I’ll pick it up. It was touching.