Book Call

[ase]

I am bored, and my personal "to read" list is packed with fiction and looks boring. So give me recommendations. I'm in the science nonfiction market, especially biology. Bonus points for things large university libraries should have on their shelves. Is there a good Linus Pauling biography? If anyone knows of a lay-ish intro to bioinformatics, please comment.

Shoutout to herewiss13: Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything is available... at the public library. It requires a little pre-planning to get there, so I'm going to wait until they call about my Fifty Degrees Below hold and pick them up at the same time. What else where you exalting? My memory is a sieve.

It's probably just as well I'm out of nonschool reading this week, what with Wednesday's physics test. (The end of Midterm Madness!) Me + novels + stress = things not getting done. Nonfiction is usually a little safer.

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, I recommend it. It's a popularization, but a good one. (ISTR it got a good review in American Scientist when it came out; I think that was where I heard about it.)

[ase.livejournal.com]

I haven't, no.

...and it's out. Am bummed. They do have his 2005 book Monster of God : the man-eating predator in the jungles of history and the mind. The title is either very, very catchy or a huge turnoff. Comments?

Also, noticed you'd finished The Lost Steersman. IIRC it annoyed me because Janus had a Fletcher complex, but other parts were good. My $.02.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard anything about the 2005 book, no. Quammen has a penchant for vivid - sometimes lurid or even vulgar - imagery, so if that's a turnoff that might be a problem. Still, I found the earlier book very informative. (And entertaining; the story of Darwin and the iguana really struck me funny.)

As for Janus: yes, I noticed that too. At one point I was concerned that Rowan seemed to be making the same mistakes as before. She turned suspicious faster than I expected, though. Kirstein's characters actually do seem to learn from experience... I'm looking forward to the next book.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Kirstein's characters actually do seem to learn from experience... I'm looking forward to the next book.

Wait until you get to the end, and there's no more (yet). Is there any word on when the next one will be out?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I could have sworn filkferengi told me something about that, but I can't find it in my archives.

[filkferengi]

Not me. Ask on the main [Bujold] list though; someone there's bound to know.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Or google around, and check usenet; I'm coming up dry, though.