User Profile

Andrew (andrewspink@mastadon.green)

andrewspink@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

I have always been an avid reader. I remember running out of children's books to read in my local library, and getting special permission to borrow from the adult's section. My favourite genre is nature writing, but I also love science fiction, literature, detectives and all sorts of other books. I read a more or less equal amount of books in Dutch and English. I've also spent a lot of my life writing. I worked for ten years as a scientist (ecology) and published a number of scientific papers, theses and so on. Later I worked for several years as a technical writer. For the last decade (almost), I've been writing grant applications. When I'm not working or reading, I'm often to be found in out in nature, preferably on my mountain bike.

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Andrew (andrewspink@mastadon.green)'s books

To Read (View all 6)

Currently Reading

Brian Daley, Brian Daley: Tron (1982, New English Library)

Review of 'Tron' on 'Goodreads'

I was 18 in 1982, when this book was published, and it would be five years before I would first own a computer. The university where I was a student had some, of course. Mainframes, in a special building. I would guess that they had less processing power than my phone today. We learnt Basic and Fortran. That is the world in which Tron is set, and it is remarkable that even then people were scared of AI and that computers would take over the world. Brian Daley portrays this as a physical battle inside the computer itself, with remarkable success. The film on which this is based was rubbish (and not just due to the technical limitations of the 80s) but this book did a much better job.

Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (2000, McGraw-Hill College)

Review of 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' on 'Goodreads'

This is a poetically written book with acute observations of the natural world, scientific explanations of what she sees, and theological and philosophical meditations on the meaning of it all.
She is particularly interested in the problem of theodicy (how could a loving God create a world full of suffering). "Certainly we give our infants the wrong idea about their fellow creatures in the world. Teddy bears should come stuffed with tiny bear-lice". The sheer volume of parasites and death is something that she is very struck by.
But this is by no means a miserable book. It is saturated with a radiant wonder at the marvels of nature. Although clearly inspired by Christian theology (and she works for a Wesleyan University), with many direct and indirect references to the bible, it is not narrow, and other religions are also included. "What if I fell in a forest? Would a …

Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary (Hardcover, 2021, Ballantine Books)

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission--and if he fails, humanity …

Review of 'Project Hail Mary' on 'Goodreads'

A very enjoyable book. Normally I prefer reading a book to listening to it, but in this case the audio definitely had an added dimension, with the tones sounded whilst Rocky was speaking. The only quarrel I would have is that all the foreign accents sound the same, and Stratt definitely doesn't have a Dutch accent (nor a Dutch surname, come to that).
The plot is well-developed, with a number of unexpected twists (given that you know that things are definitely going to go wrong). Having a scientific background did mean that I saw some things coming a while before I think the author intended, but that wasn't really a problem, given that it gave me a nice smug feeling! The flashbacks by way of partial recovery of memories worked well and wasn't too artificial.
The characters were well-developed. Most of the time, Grace is the only human around, and …

Kerken van goud, dominees van hout : over de verwording van de Nederlandse natuurbescherming (Dutch language, 2021)

Review of 'Kerken van goud, dominees van hout : over de verwording van de Nederlandse natuurbescherming' on 'Goodreads'

This was not an easy book to read Aot of it was a long rant full of rather extreme polemic, to the point of factual inaccuracy, but in between there were through provoking and interesting chapters.
His habbit of writing long rambling footnotes (apparently encouraged by the publisher!) didn't help, and the individual chapters sometimes read as separate essays without much connection to the chapters before or after. There is also quite a lot of repetition (how many times does he tell us where he lives?), which is a bit irritating.
Some ideas are more bizarre than others. The proposal that everyone working in nature conservation should only be paid mi imum wage isn't very friendly towards those of them with families to support, for example.
But there are good points. The reintroduction programme of black grouse on the Sallandseheuvelrug is indeed barmy. Blaming predators for the demise of other …

Stephen Baxter: Manifold: Space (2002, Del Rey)

The year is 2020. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Reid Malenfant ventures to the far …

Review of 'Manifold: Space' on 'Goodreads'

I quite enjoyed it but not as much as the previous one in the series (Time). It was a bit rambling in parts and the plot wasn't always so riveting. I didn't feel that the characters were that well developed either.
The stuff about the Neanderthals and other hominids was quite fun, but research since the book was written has shown that they were much more developed than we used to think, quite possibly with language, for instance. There was definitely interbreeding with Homo sapiens ; we all have some Neanderthal DNA in our genome.
In the end the story still comes back to human exceptionally, for exceptionally vage reasons ('faith'!), which is a bit disappointing.

Sosuke Natsukawa: The Cat Who Saved Books (Hardcover, 2021, HarperVia)

Grandpa used to say it all the time: books have tremendous power. But what is …

Review of 'The Cat Who Saved Books' on 'Goodreads'

I must confess, I was a little disappointed in this book. I had somewhere read or heard an enthusiastic review, so my expectations were high, but it did not live up to them. The form was a rather fairly-tail like series of episodes which were essentially commentary on the publishing world. That meant the book had a certain simplicity and was easy to read, but it did lack depth. Ironically, one of the passages in the book complained that modern books are too easy to read and lack depth. Was this supposed to be ironic? I was not very convinced by some of the complaints against the publishing industry. For instance, that there is a preponderance of summaries and abbreviated texts these days. Maybe that is a feature of Japan today, but for me that sounded like the popularity of Reader's Digest books and magazines in the 1970s, which I …

Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Paperback, 1990, Vintage)

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one …

Review of 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit' on 'Goodreads'

I was not prepared for how humorous this book was. A couple of times it even made me laugh out loud. That made for a very enjoyable read, notwithstanding the serious issues that the book deals with. The book is famous for its discussion of sexuality (or at least that is why I first heard of it, years ago), but actually the central theme is the way that small religious groups are very controlling in the way they determine what and how their members think, and the struggle that some people have to escape from that. With the rise of the religious right in the US, this discussion is very timely, even though the book was written 25 years ago. However, I doubt that many Americans reading it will fully grasp the Northern English humour (but perhaps I do them an injustice there). Anyway, an entertaining and thought-provoking read, and …

Dorothy L. Sayers: Strong Poison (Paperback, 1987, HarperCollins Publishers)

This is the first in the Lord Peter Wimsey series of stories that includes Harriet …

Review of 'Strong Poison' on 'Goodreads'

Did I read this book years ago or did Agatha Christie have much same plot in a book I read years ago? I'm not sure, but even though I saw the ending a while before it came, it was still fun to read and I finished it off in no time at all.

Richard Osman: The Man Who Died Twice (Hardcover, 2021)

It's the following Thursday.

Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man …

Review of 'The Man Who Died Twice' on 'Goodreads'

Entertaining, enjoyable and delightful characters. A little predictable in parts, but that might be down to listening to the audio book rather than reading it, so that gives much more time to think about it.