Pam Phillips wants to read Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins by Hal Whitehead
On Explore the World of Science list sent by Richard
Reviews and Comments
Taking my next step into the Fediverse from Mastodon. I've written some weird little SF stories and poems, but I don't read much fiction any more. Now I'm mostly interested in science and history, especially non-human intelligence.
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Pam Phillips wants to read In Defense of Plants by Matt Candeias
A botanist’s defense. Since his early days of plant restoration, this amateur plant scientist has …
On Explore the World of Science list sent by Richard
Pam Phillips started reading Artificial Condition by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)
Artificial Condition is the follow-up to Martha Wells’s Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New …
Actually a re-read. Looking forward to meeting ART again.
Pam Phillips wants to read Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects by Robell Awake
Pam Phillips wants to read League of Kitchens Cookbook by Lisa Gross
Pam Phillips finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles
When, in 1922, thirty-year-old Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik …
Stayed up to 1am to finish it.
Pam Phillips wants to read Hotel Lux by Maurice Casey
Interview on BBC History Extra: www.historyextra.com/period/hotel-lux-podcast-maurice-j-casey/
Seems like a good counterpoint to A Gentleman in Moscow
Pam Phillips reviewed What the Bees See by Craig P. Burrows
Beautiful photos of flowers, text about honeybees and manuka
3 stars
The photos are captured with an unusual technique, but they don't show the UV marks on flowers. You don't see any of the rays and rings known to help bees find the pollen. The text carefully explains that they capture the fluorescence in visible light caused by ultraviolet light. What this mainly shows is that pollen fluoresces. What really bugged me is that none of the photos are captioned! You have to turn to a list in the back notes to find out what they are. Once the text has explained what the photos are, it delves into how insects see. Then it gives an overview about honeybees. Having reached roughly the halfway point, it seems to run out of things to say about bees and spends most of the remainder talking about manuka honey. So much is written and repeated about manuka, you begin to wonder if the book …
The photos are captured with an unusual technique, but they don't show the UV marks on flowers. You don't see any of the rays and rings known to help bees find the pollen. The text carefully explains that they capture the fluorescence in visible light caused by ultraviolet light. What this mainly shows is that pollen fluoresces. What really bugged me is that none of the photos are captioned! You have to turn to a list in the back notes to find out what they are. Once the text has explained what the photos are, it delves into how insects see. Then it gives an overview about honeybees. Having reached roughly the halfway point, it seems to run out of things to say about bees and spends most of the remainder talking about manuka honey. So much is written and repeated about manuka, you begin to wonder if the book was subsidized by the Manuka Board.
Great photos, though.
Pam Phillips started reading All Systems Red by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, …
Revving up to read the whole series.
Pam Phillips started reading Procrastination by Fuschia M. Sirois
Why do we procrastinate? How can we stop wasting time, and finish our work?
Drawing …
Audiobook in Hoopla.
Pam Phillips wants to read Procrastination by Fuschia M. Sirois
Why do we procrastinate? How can we stop wasting time, and finish our work?
Drawing …
Found Fuschia Sirois when looking for how to use self-compassion to tackle procrastion. It helps that she was a student of Timothy Pychyl, who I have found somewhat helpful.
From the author of Fun Home, a profound graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love …
Engaging essays, beautiful artwork, poses questions that may be unresolvable.
4 stars
At first glance, the book seems to be about Alison Bechdel's life of exercise. Then you see it's also about her love of the outdoors, which leads to some truly beautiful layouts of trees and mountains and tiny people in the landscape. She bounces her own transcendent experiences off other transcendalists: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Emerson and Margaret Fuller, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder. The more she strives and succeeds and struggles with that very success, the more mystified she seems to be about why she works so hard, both mentally and physically. None of the answers she finds in therapy, meditation, or Buddhism seem to satisfy for long. In the end, I'm not convinced that her persona in the book has truly accepted what few want to face: our own mortality and failing bodies. But then, I'm only a year older, so who could say if there are any answers.
Pam Phillips reviewed Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella L. Bird
The firsthand account of a British adventuress as she treks though the Japanese outback in …
19th century Japan leavened with acerbic comments
4 stars
As this was originally written, as a series of letters to Isabella Bird's sisters, her observations are delivered in a generally casual, chatty manners. Some of her comments on the minor discomforts of travel are pretty funny. Major difficulties and injuries are shrugged off matter of factly, even as she describes the beautiful landscapes she passes through. We heard about her on the NHK series, Journeys in Japan. What they didn't tell you is that Ms. Bird was very taken with the Ainu people she visited and engaged in some amateur anthropology with. Finally, the cover image shown here is a tad misleading about the horses and ponies she encountered, few of which were the least bit tractable. The treatment of horses she witnessed is appalling, and the horses fought back when they thought they could get away with it.
Pam Phillips wants to read Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal
Found after looking for something more recent than First Peoples in a New World. Placed a hold via my Kobo.
Pam Phillips wants to read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building; its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls …
On NPR Books We Love list