Fieldnotes: On Staying Clam & Reading in 2019 ☽ Part I ☾

Yay! I finally remembered to start my new thread.

I'm currently reading Lethal White by Robert Galbraith AKA J.K. Rowling and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I bailed out on Warlight, The Three Body Problem and Record of a Spaceborn few, but I plan to go back to the Becky Chambers. Might not go back to the others, though.

All the piffle paid off; we have a 2019 Clam thread.

I have not heard a bad word said about the Robert Galbraith books. We have most of them in the house; I must get around to reading them someday.

I read The Three Body Problem. Let’s just say I was glad to get to the end of it and have no great desire to read the sequels. I think I was not able to suspend my disbelief sufficiently to suppress some of the physics knowledge that I have.

I enjoyed the first Becky Chambers novel but I found it difficult to get into the second. I gave it a good chance but I felt it just dragged on. I am told it gets better but I have plenty of other books that I am finding are better from the start.

Good luck with your 2019 reading and every other aspect of 2019. I am enjoying your beach photographs. I love it when I am near the sea. It is so relaxing.

Happy new year! I hope 2019 brings you all good things in reading and in life.

I have the Becky Chambers on Mount TBR. I'll get to it some time this year. Three body problem is on my kindle and I've heard such mixed reviews that I don't know what to expect.

>1 clamairy: Happy newish year, and I hope you find a lot of great reading for 2019!

Yay! Happy new thread and new year.

Hippo Gnu Ear! And new thread!

>1 clamairy: & >2 pgmcc: That's a shame about The Three Body Problem as I have that and its sequel already sat on the tbr shelves.

How come I didn't even know Record was available?! hmm. What didn't you like about it??

I didn't know JK had written so many of the Strike books, they made a decent enough TV series out of them last? year

I did read three body problem to the end, but wasn't convinced enough to read the rest and see how it all resolves.

>8 reading_fox: The thing that worked for me with Angry Planet was that most of the characters were on the same ship, but with Record they're all over the place. I didn't dislike it, it just wasn't getting me hooked like I'd hoped it would. I do plan to go back to it.

Didn't know they made a series! Does it cover the first three books or just the first book?

I really enjoyed Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but wasn't sufficiently motivated to read the next one.

>9 clamairy: I think your Touchstone for "Record" may be going to the wrong book.

Hurray! The new thread. "She's never late, but always arrives precisely when she means to."

>12 MrsLee: I never thought of Clare as Mary Poppins, but now that you mention it.

>10 SylviaC: The second was good, but just had too much to live up to in my mind.
>11 pgmcc: Arg. I'll fix it later. On my phone now.
>12 MrsLee: Thank you! ♥️
>13 pgmcc: I was hoping she meant Gandalf!

>14 clamairy: Mary Poppins is much more fun than Gandalf. She can take you into chalk drawings on the footpath even before CGI was invented.

Very glad to have you back, Clam!

>14 clamairy: I did have Gandalf in mind, but I suppose Mary Poppins works too. :)

I have to say I too love your beach photos. Like Peter says, being close to water is calming, and I wouldn't voluntarily live somewhere away from open water. And yours are so beautiful, with the light and everything.

Happy new year and new thread!

Happy New Year, clammy!

Alrighty, then. More pics will be forthcoming.

I took this one during a foggy day earlier this week. This isn't the beach I usually spend my time wandering on. That one is public. This one is private, and part of the small community I moved into. Unfortunately it has been eroded by storms until there isn't much left. But what is left is still quite lovely.

I miss the fog. We don't get it much where I live. And when we do, it's freezing fog and makes things icy and slick. But it leaves a film of frost all over everything, which is very beautiful. But the feel of freezing fog is different than fog in warmer temps.

>21 clamairy: Really cool effect, with the fog and the reflections in the water.

>21 clamairy: Beaut!

>21 clamairy: That is a beautifully atmospheric picture.

>21 clamairy: This was one of the first things I saw when I checked facebook this morning! The perfect start to the day. Love the reflection and the fog; there's a real sense of mystery that draws me in.

>9 clamairy: - according to wiki it was the 1st three books, it was on the BBC called Strike. Doesn't look like it's currently available, but maybe there is/will be a dvd release.

>9 clamairy: The C.B. Strike series was on Cinemax network. Quite good. I think I saw them say they were planning on doing more of them.

Well that is lovely! We have fog fairly often here in the river valley. It's always nice to be out in.

>21 clamairy: Pretty! Calming, and yet, suspenseful.

Although we have fog quite often and I love it (having grown up on the dry Highveld), I'm still trying to work out how to take a picture of the fog that shows something other than greyness and says "I like this".

>21 clamairy: Lovely! But I bet it's cold this time of year.

>21 clamairy: I love this photo :)

Thank you, everyone.

Jill, it was actually in the mid 40s, that's why it was foggy. Today it was cooler and windy. We made it to the beach but we didn't stay long. I have to invest in a jacket for my dog. She's got a sweater, but it doesn't stop the wind.

Today’s fun fact is that Qatar where I live is supposed to be the only country of which the whole land surface is desert, but fog is not uncommon at night around this time of year.

>35 haydninvienna: It happens every night on the coast of Namibia, due to the icy-cold Benguela Current. Very occasionally it happens further inland, but then not all of Namibia is true desert. (Parts of the Caprivi are swampy.)

>35 haydninvienna: >36 hfglen: Fascinating info, gentlemen. Our fog is much more traditional.

>37 clamairy: LOL. Our fog comes at this time of year and we had one day last week when it was foggy all day long. We get land fog and sea fog so sometimes it can be sunny and beautiful and you see banks of sea fog rolling down the bayou. Very dramatic.

Gorgeous photo!

Happy New Year - may you have a year of many great reads!

oops wrong thread

>41 cindydavid4: Did you mean to post this in your own thread? 😊

Oops sorry I thought i was posting in the reading thread!!! I'll remove that one, thanks for the heads up :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Have a great day, Clare!

Hippo Birdie two ewe. Many thanks for making this Pub the great place it is!

Happy birthday, clam!
ETA: May I call you Clare?

Happy Birthday, @clamairy, and may we both have many more!

Thank you, all!

>46 haydninvienna: Of course!

Happy birthday - may the coming year bring you many excellent books.

Sorry I haven't been posting, but my phone, cable and internet have been out for days. I did finish Lethal White and I'll come back to chat a bit about it when I get better internet access again. Using my phone for everything now. Luckily I have a large data plan.

Happy (belated) birthday, clam!

OMG, Happy Birthday, Island Lady!

>50 clamairy: If you didn't have such a beautiful beach to explore nearby, I would feel sorry for you. ;) Hope your modern world gets back to normal soon.

>48 clamairy: Thanks, I'm still feeling a trifle new round here. And in honour of your recent birthday, here is a picture of a clam:

Many thanks all, and that's one very impressive clam, >54 haydninvienna:!

I've finally gotten my internet, phone & cable back. What should have taken a few days at the most took almost 2 weeks because my company is short on technicians. (Maybe because they aren't paying them enough.)

Yay, internet!
:)

Great to hear you are back on the world wide web, pulling out into the fast lane on the information superhighway.

I did manage to get through a few books so far this month.


I enjoyed Lethal White, the fourth book in the series that JK Rowling writes as Robert Galbraith. I got sucked in quickly enough, but I do wish that Robin wasn't always having to be rescued at some point.



Vladimir Putin: Life Coach is a mostly tongue-in-cheek quick read about how to emulate the master. The serious bits are the footnotes, some of which include details of the ruthless lengths the nefarious Putin has gone to in order to gain and maintain his power. Quite a few of those tales (poisonings & murders) I already knew about, but many I did not. It's really a four star book but I gave it five because I was rather annoyed to see someone gave it only one.



CIRCE was a book bullet that I took right between the eyes on @jillmwo's thread. Thank you for that, Jill. I did enjoy it immensely, and now I plan to read The Song of Achilles sooner rather than later.

I am about halfway through Six Wakes. (Which I believe was a @Busifer bullet!)

Oooh, ooh, I want to read Circe! I have about a gazillion library books on my hall table so it will be a while.

I am so glad you've got back your Internet! Pull up a chair and enjoy the return to us all.

Good thing you had some books to read while your internet and cable were down!

>61 SylviaC: Ha! Yes... Needless to say I keep both my physical and virtual shelves well stocked.



Six Wakes was a book bullet that nailed me in @Busifer's thread. I requested the eBook from my library and it showed up within days. I hopped right into it after finishing CIRCE. It was mostly a fun distracting read, and I think Busifer pointed out there wasn't much of a surprise at the end. I did enjoy the arguments & discussions on the ethics of cloning and gene tweaking, and whether cloned humans have souls. My main quibbles had to do with the science & SciFi bits. I can't understand why the author went to all of the trouble to set the book four centuries in the future, dream up and write about mind mapping technology & organic body printing capabilities, and then have the crew fighting with knives & guns. Also 99% of the technology & equipment the ship's physician used is what we're using in our hospitals now.

Now on to my first Mary Oliver book of poems, Dog Songs.

>62 clamairy: It seems like I keep seeing this book pop up all over lately, with a wide variety of opinions. All those different opinions make me all the more curious to try it eventually. :)

I snagged this from OverDrive last week when Mary Oliver passed. I realized, much to my shame, that while I'd loved each poem of hers that my daughter (and several other friends) had ever shared with me, I'd never actually read any of her books. Dog Songs is wonderful, and I was somewhat surprised to find almost as much prose and poetry in the volume. I'll only share one snippet:

"And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old—or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give."

>64 clamairy: How true.

>62 clamairy: Agreed. I still enjoyed it for the philosophical bits, and in my opinion it was well written if not very imaginative in the sf parts.
Maybe I'm too easy to please ;-)

>66 Busifer: "Maybe I'm too easy to please ;-)"

Ha! We know that's not the case! :o)

>67 clamairy: Well, maybe not ;-)
The book fitted well with my need not to read too difficult or heavy stuff for a while.

>68 Busifer: Yes, it didn't demand a ton of thinking, and it certainly kept my attention. In some ways it reminded me a bit of A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but these travelers were at each other's throats. LOL

>69 clamairy: Ah. I almost picked A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet as my next read. Maybe I should had...

@clamairy and @busifer -- So am I correct in interpreting your comments about Six Wakes as meaning that it's not superb *speculative fiction* but still worth a read?

>71 jillmwo: It is not great imaginative science fiction when it comes to the "universe" parts of it. As Clare says it's not that far off from what is available today, on a commercial scale, except for the cloning and generation ship tech. But the way it discussed the ethics and effects of cloning was interesting, and it was well written and told. So yes, while not stunning and superb definitely worth reading.
I enjoyed it very much.

We were pretty chilly here last week, as most of you know. But it's been glorious here the last couple of days. I took this one yesterday evening about 4/5ths of the way down a cliff side. I was on some very sturdy steps. Most of my photos are of Peconic Bay which is a short walk from my home, but this is Long island Sound. It's only a two mile drive miles north of me.



That is not snow on the shore. We haven't had any. That's just regular ice.

Great sky! Don’t you sometimes wonder how so many people go through life without ever really looking at the sky?

>73 clamairy: Good Heavens! I thought it was a concrete/cement pathway! (Clearly, we don't get that cold here.) It's a gorgeous picture.

>73 clamairy:
Lovely picture. I love the silhouette of the tree.

>73 clamairy: Oh how I envy you your shoreline walks, thank you for sharing them with us in photos!

Thanks, peeps.

>76 pgmcc: Most of the trees on that shore are bent a bit southward. LOL

>77 MrsLee: I do feel lucky to be where I am. And I was even more appreciative for these last few days of warmth & sun. Especially after last week's deep freeze. It was 7°F here (-14°C) just a few days ago. Today we hit 61°F (16°C) and it was greatly appreciated. We're headed back to more normal temps tomorrow, but it was a nice break.

Sorry I haven't been posting in my own thread. After reading up a storm in January I have been slowly working my way through Michelle Obama's Becoming, which was pretty awesome. I have several theories as to why it took so long. For one, the weather has been pretty decent and I've been taking the dog to the beach every day and walking about three miles, and then walking another mile to the marina later in the day. For another, it was good and I didn't want to race through it. But the main reason is probably that I knew how it ended, so I didn't feel any rush to keep going to find out what was going to happen. Anyway I highly recommend the book, no matter what your political leanings might be.

I'm probably going to be AFK for about three weeks after today. I'm getting ready for a big trip with my kids. I'll be posting pictures when I return, and on Facebook (and Instagram) while I'm gone.
So ta ta for now. :o)

>79 clamairy: I hope you all have a great trip! I look forward to the pictures.

Bon voyage.

Enjoy the family time, Clam!

Bon voyage!

Safe travels.

Bon voyage! Travel safely, and enjoy every minute.

Have fun storming the castle!

Enjoy the time with your kids!

Safe travels! Looking forward to seeing photos on your return.

Safe and happy travels!

Sorry it's taken me so long to come back. The trip was awesome, but I got out of the habit of dropping in here, except to lurk a bit and stalk the Roombas. Also, I was a bit depressed after returning to the cold weather here. So I hid inside and read a bunch. At least I have some books to blab about.



I grabbed Whisper Me This by Kerry Anne King because I wanted to read something I already owned. I used LT to sort my unread Kindle books by other users' ratings and this was rather high. It was a decent enough read, and there's quite a bit of humor, but there were a few very unrealistic bits that took some of the pleasure out of the experience. So it goes.



I decided to read The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings while I was visiting Hawaii because it takes place there. I'd seen the movie a few years ago and enjoyed it. It was a bit quirky, and I appreciated that very much.



Several people in here recommended In the Woods by Tana French after I finished the The Witch Elm. I enjoyed this one so much more. In fact I had trouble putting it down.



Force of Nature by Jane Harper is the sequel to The Dry that I read last year and enjoyed so much. It was a decent enough read, but didn't satisfy me as much as the first one did.



I thought The Likeness by Tana French was even better than the 1st book in The Dublin Murder Squad series. Loved it! It didn't even matter to me who the culprit was, I just wanted to keep wallowing in the atmosphere. In fact it was so good that I proceeded with great haste right into...



So Faithful Place by Tana French was okay, but I'm fine with stopping here for a bit with this series. This one has a much less pleasant setting, and the cast of characters were a bit tough to handle.

Luckily this plopped onto my Kindle, and it was a perfect palate cleanser.



I am honestly not sure if I read Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose in high school or if I saw the film at some point in my childhood. I think Jill recommended this one a while back, and I'm glad I got reacquainted with it.

This is a good enough spot to stop. I'll be back to discuss one more book, but I plan to go a bit more in depth with that one. And I want to share a few pics from my trip as well.

Forgive me if it takes me a long time to catch up on everyone's threads.

>90 clamairy: I have a couple of books by Tana French and your comments are pushing them further up Mt. TBR.

I am looking forward to seeing more pictures from your trip.

Glad to see you back clammy. Were you the one stalking the Roomba that scared that poor woman into calling the police, thinking a burglar was in the bathroom? Someone put that notice in the FB pub group.

How the heck did I not see your new thread until today?! Hey there Clam! Happy 2019!

>90 clamairy: I saw 12 Angry Men on TV (the 1957 film version starring Henry zFonda) as a teenager, and it made a profound impression on me. I never realised that it was based on a teleplay.

Incidentally, there is also a Russian adaption, 12, with a Chechen as the kid whose background stacks the odds against him. (I've been hunting for some time for a copy with adequate English subtitles.)

I read The Witch Elm a few weeks ago and enjoyed it. Glad to hear her other books are even better! I'll be looking for her in the library this summer.

>90 clamairy: & >94 -pilgrim-:
My first exposure to Twelve Angry Men was the 1957 film. It was an amazing cast when you look at the careers of the cast after that film.

>91 pgmcc: & >95 catzteach: Hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

>94 -pilgrim-: & >96 pgmcc: I need to re-watch it.

>92 MrsLee: Thank you! No, it wasn't me, but that has happened to me more times than I can count. I knew what was blocking the door though, as I was the one who placed the Roomba in the bathroom. I had mine on a scheduled auto-clean only for a brief while. All it took was one viewing of an online photo of dog turds smeared all over carpet by a Roomba to make me delete the schedule. :o)

After reading this piece in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid.html immediately followed by reading this much more in-depth article in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died I wanted to wallow in this subject a while longer. By this time just about everyone knows of this event, but I wanted more detail about the initial discovery of the impact and subsequent extinction. Who better to tell the tale than one of the men who made this discovery?

I planned on nattering on and on about it, but this isn't really the group for it.

Right now I'm reading Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, which is thoroughly disheartening, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is not.

>97 clamairy: Haha, I read a review on Amazon describing a similar experience before buying my first Roomba and I have never, ever used the scheduling feature because of that! In the case of my cat, I’m less worried about turds than I am vomit. He doesn't really throw up that often, but it does happen and he can't be bothered to do it on a reliable schedule.

I always have to do a quick check through the house before I start it anyway – the lighthouses tend to get knocked out of alignment, the cat toys are no longer neatly in their baskets and are lying in wait to confound the Roomba, and strings from the blinds are dangling on the ground just waiting for a chance to wrap themselves around the wheels.

>99 YouKneeK: Yes, I do the same. Wires, pet toys, all of that stuff has to dealt with before launching the Roomba. I suspect smeared barf would be almost as bad to clean up as turd smears. 💩

Wow! Automated dog-turd and cat-barf spreaders; extinction causing meteor strikes; world changing events, and Twelve Angry Men; this thread has it all.

>100 clamairy: Hmm. Now I'm *more* interested in the idea of a Roomba. Our bunny is good about using her litter box but the occasional dropped rabbit raisin still occurs, and a Roomba would take care of those no problem (they're dry and don't smear.)

Wouldn't the bunny uh, hoover those up herself?

>103 Bookmarque: No. Buns produce two types of excreta; one is "recycled" and the other isn't.

Ah got it.

Finally getting around to sharing some of my Maui photos. It's been two months, but somehow it feels longer. The place is magnificent, and still relatively unspoiled. I could live there in heartbeat, but it's just too far away from everyone I love on this planet.

>106 clamairy: Those are beautiful pictures! I’ve never been to Hawaii, but I would really like to visit sometime. Your pictures just reinforced that I really need to get it on the agenda. :)

Ooh, where on Maui did you stay? We went twice a looooong time ago and stayed in Makena, on the southwest side. But we drove up Haleakala (pausing at Kula, which I think must be heaven on earth) and out to Hana, and up the coast to Kaanapali and Kapalua. I would so love to go back.

>106 clamairy: Those are super pictures. It looks like a beautiful place.

Regards,

Peter

Beautiful photos! Thanks so much for sharing. Now I want to go to Maui :)

What a stunning place! Many thanks for sharing.

So pretty! I want to melt into the photos and stay there forever. Or at least until I get lonely.

ETA: Love the new dragon image on the group homepage. :)

Love the pics! I so need to get to Hawaii someday.

Beautiful photos! Those blues in the first two shots are so intense.

Gorgeous photos. Is it humid, like the Caribbean, like entering a sauna when you get off the plane? I’ve heard not so much.

Thank you, all.

>108 Marissa_Doyle: We were in Wailea. It's on the Southwestern corner of Maui, too. It's just north of Makena. When I visited 30 years ago I stayed in Ka'anapali. There are a lot more whales now. We could just lay poolside and look out and see them putting on a show, especially at sunset. It really did feel like paradise.

>112 MrsLee: I tried to find a bookish dragon.

>115 stellarexplorer: Parts of Maui are a bit humid, especially that Northwestern corner, but we were on one of the dry parts of the island. Everything is lush, but that's because it's watered. My hair was only about half the size that it is here in the Summer. :o)

After a loooong day flying and waiting for our rental car (convertible, of course!) I drove down the winding entrance of the hotel and was surprised by this view:



And all I could think of was that high elves had designed the place.

I've taken a break from Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush. It's about the devastating effects that climate change is having on our coastal areas. I found myself laying in bed at 1:00 AM frantically scanning projected flood stage maps of my new location. :o/ My house will probably be waterfront in another 75 years. The book has a high rating here on LT (only 5 ratings so far, though) and I can't pinpoint what my problem was with the writing, except I felt the author was injecting herself into the subject matter a bit too much.

Plus I was feeling a bit bereft by the impending loss of Game of Thrones, so I read A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I highly recommend this one, even to those who want to avoid the usual incest, raping, pillaging, and rampant mutilation of the usual George R. R. Martin fare. It has none of that. It's almost YA.

>116 clamairy: Oo, so pretty!

>116 clamairy: Straight out of Lothlorien!

>116 clamairy: I can see that! Very eldar.

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan was decent, but not outstanding. He's one of my favorite non-fiction writers, so I'm blaming the subject matter. I think I was more interested in the neuroscience & the applications of this drug class and less in the history of psychedelics and the wild shenanigans of Timothy Leary and his ilk. I do find Pollan's voice very soothing, though.

I've started listening to the The Selfish Gene.

>121 clamairy: TSG: an oldie but goodie!

>122 stellarexplorer: It has been around forever. I've owned a physical copy for years but just never picked it up. Last year I had a bunch of audible credits to use and snagged this. So far it's been a good accompaniment to ripping out weeds and transplanting things.

>121 clamairy:. Pollan began this subject in The Botany of Desire, and I cringed at his treatment of the material there. He is really out of his depth; sounds like an infatuated hippie-dippie.

Ps: And I truly am an ardent fan of his gardening and food writing.

>123 clamairy: It’s the book that made Dawkins’ public career. Still well worth the read, especially when it complements one’s garden!

The Song of Achilles was quite good, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did Madeline Miller's Circe. I felt it got a bit bogged down during the years fighting outside the walls of Troy. So it took me longer to get through this than it should have.

I'm moving on to The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen. It's very highly rated, and goes hand-in-hand with Richard Alevarez's book in post #98.

>126 clamairy: You got me with The Ends of the World...which, as it turns out, was only $1.99 for the ebook at Barnes and Noble.

>127 Marissa_Doyle: I hope you enjoy it. I'm only a few pages in, but it's well written so far.

>126 clamairy: I recently got the Brannen book. It looks right up my apocalyptic alley - would love to hear your reactions!

>129 stellarexplorer: It's awesome so far. I'm just angry with myself because I lost the Geological Timescale I printed out and took notes on while reading the Alvarez book. So I had to print another and start a batch of new notes. I am enjoying this guy's writing style. Though I borrowed this from OverDrive I think it might buy the Kindle copy as it's on sale for $1.99 right now.

>130 clamairy: I have bought a little insurance policy when it comes to the geological timescale: I have a framed copy hanging in my kitchen!

>131 stellarexplorer: That's a great idea to display it. But why in the kitchen?

I used to have it committed to memory. 😣

>132 clamairy: Committed to memory? Seriously? Well it depends on how detailed you want to go. I happen to use the Geological Society of America poster, and the Ordovician, for example, is divided into 3 Epochs, and 14 Ages, including ones named the Hirnantian, Rhuddanian, and Sheinwoodian. I’m happy to have a rough recall of the Ordovician, and the poster ready at hand is highly useful.

Why the kitchen? Good question. It’s really about the way my house is layed out, with the kitchen really being a combination kitchen/ eating area/open floor plan which is the place I spend the most time. So “kitchen” was shorthand. The timescale resides between framed posters of “The Electromagnetic Spectrum” and “Language Families of the World”. I’m such a nerd!

>133 stellarexplorer: Then is sounds like the perfect spot for it. And only wear that word nerd if you consider it a thing to be proud of, which I do.

It was only down to the epoch level, and the professor (for a biology class called Vertebrate Life) gave us a very clever mnemonic phrase (which I have since completely forgotten) to get them lodged in our brains. Most of it did stay with me for several years.

>134 clamairy: "China Owls Seldom Devour Clay Pigeons, They Just Chase Each Other, Making Preposterous Puns"?
Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene?

And yes, I typed it all correctly from memory, although I admit to checking that I got the order of the last 2 right. It's not the only mnemonic, of course, and some of them are much ruder.

>135 haydninvienna: I love it, but that wasn't it. Or at least it's not ringing any bells. I'll look at them later and see if I recognize the one I was taught.

I’d love to know! Yes, nerd is not pejorative. Just a fact I wear with pleasure!

>137 stellarexplorer: Hey, is that language families of the world an evolution of language chart?!!? Gah. That's another one of my thangs. Pretty sure on FaceBook I have the languages I speak listed as Elvish, Klingon* and Proto-Indo-European. I'm sure there was wine involved with that entry... As is also likely with my religious affiliation, which is listed as Zen-Druid.

*Speaking of nerds...

>138 clamairy: Not really, though that would be great too.

It’s this one:

https://manywaystoseetheworld.org/products/language-families-of-the-world-poster...

Zen-Druid? I suspected, but I wasn’t sure!

U-hu. I need that Language families of the world poster!

Part of my job includes to learn a new industry every now and then, which means a lot of my active knowledge varies over time. But maybe also because of that I encounter and has to handle quite a lot of different ways language can be used, which makes it a topic of interest to me.

@Busifer is not the only one who wants the aforementioned poster!

I'm loving The Ends of the World--very engaging writing, and it's reviving memories of geology classes taken in college.*

*I had actually heard of graptolites, because one of our geo profs studied them.

#142 I'm enjoying it, too. It's not something I seem to be able to sit and chew on for hours at a time, however. So I'm only about halfway. Plus I have it open to the text on my Paperwhite and to the illustrations on my Fire.

Paper books have such a nice advantage over ebooks when it comes to tables, illustrations, etc, in nonfiction IMHO. With fiction, I can go either way...

>144 stellarexplorer: Even I (a dedicated e-book reader who gripes when I have to read a physical book) prefer physical books if it’s a textbook that I’m trying to learn something from, especially if it has tables and illustrations. I tried an e-book once for a textbook, and the charts were too small on the page. I had to zoom in to see them properly, but then the text wasn't visible and I needed to see the charts in the context of the text. All the zooming in and out drove me nuts, and I was using a tablet with a fairly large screen. I’m sure some e-books are formatted better, but I never made the attempt again. I also missed being able to have color-coded flags sticking out of the book.

On the other hand, when I’m reading some sort of an annotated work, like Shakespeare or something, then I do pretty much what >143 clamairy: described. I open the text on my Kindle e-reader and the footnotes on my Fire and hold them side-by-side in my lap so I can more or less see and read everything at once. That works well for me, so maybe my textbook issue could have been solved that way also. The e-textbook incident was long before I started reading annotated works and thought to use two devices.

>144 stellarexplorer: & >145 YouKneeK: In this case it also does not help that all of the illustrations are at the end of the book, with not a single link to the appropriate ones found in the text. They are not even referenced in the text. I would never have known they were there at all if @NorthernStar had not mentioned stumbling upon them all in her thread.

I would be all on board with paper Non-Fiction books if they had adjustable font. ;o)

>146 clamairy: Lol, that is an advantage!

I've posted this elsewhere, but for those currently reading The Ends of the World you may also be interested in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which is $1.99 CAD on Kobo today. I didn't check on Amazon, but often sales are on both. I borrowed the audiobook of this from our library, and liked it enough to get the ebook at that price.

Edited to add - when I checked, The Ends of the World is on for the same price.

>148 NorthernStar: The Sixth Extinction is well worth that price, and then some. (I own the Audible edition, and I actually plan to listen to it again.)

I snagged the kindle ebook “textbook edition”, which claims to give better representation of the figures and illustrations, thanks to Northernstar : thank you! (My first purchase of such a format! - we’ll see!)

>150 stellarexplorer: I noticed they had that version and not the regular Kindle version as an option. In fact the Kindle version was nowhere to be seen. Let us know how it is.

I finished The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen last night. An amazing if mostly unsettling read. I'll be back to post a longer analysis this evening.

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions took me several weeks to work through, but it was well worth every second. As I mentioned in a previous post I printed out a geological timescale to scribble on, though I didn't add much. Mainly I focused on what percentage of life perished and what the causes were for each of the five big events. CO2 has been an issue several times (either too much or not enough) so it's not a surprise that is our issue today. Brannen did a decent job of keeping me interested, and he is actually quite funny at times, even when the subject is grim:

"One innovation in particular has turned us into a truly geological force: our global effort to take as much ancient carbon from the rock record as possible and ignite it all at once in the atmosphere. This is a superpower normally reserved for continental flood basalts."

Hey, should I be hiding this behind spoiler tags? ;o)

But we do appear to be headed for a rough time. He quotes paleontologist Alicia Stigall,

"The modern combination of habitat destruction coupled with species introductions is, therefore, likely to result in total biodiversity loss that may be even greater than that experienced during the End-Permian mass extinction."

That's the biggy. The Permian Extinction is also known as The Great Dying. A whopping 96% of the species then living on the planet were wiped out, due in part to ocean acidification. Only 4% of the species made it out on the other side!

The event everyone knows about, the KT event that took out T. rex & company, was actually one of the least horrific. As devastating as the asteroid impact and subsequent seismic and volcanic upheaval were, it seems 24% of Earth's species managed to survived.

The gist is, yes, extinctions events have happened in the past without human help. In fact, it appears that as the first trees (our great allies in the war against CO2) spread their way across dry land they sucked so much CO2 out of the air they helped cause an ice age that wiped out 75% of species. So we're in good company, so to speak. We are just like the trees of the Devonian. Except they, most likely, had no clue what they were doing to the planet. We do.

>153 clamairy: That sounds fascinating. It's going on my wishlist.

154 Wonderful! I hope you enjoy it.

Great review. An homage to the combination of our intelligence and stupidity.

I’m looking forward to reading it. Despite the spoiler! ;)

>153 clamairy: That is a super post. I love the quote regarding the superpower reserved for continental flood basalts.

In terms of signs of things getting bad I have been struck over the past fifteen years by the effect of climate change on agriculture in Ireland. In addition to the problems of reduced biodiversity leading to problems with crop pollination, I have noticed an increase in non-normal weather patterns leading to annual problems for farmers. Events, such as unusually high rainfall or prolonged drought, were once in a decade or two decades events. Now we find some unusual conditions hitting almost every year. High rainfall can lead to conditions in which it is not possible to harvest crops, gather hay, or plough fields. This leads to shortage of winter fodder for animals, reduced crop yield, or total loss of crops. The fodder shortages are something that lasts through the winter and we have had the situation where the following spring and summer have had too much or too little sunshine leading to poor grass growth and hence poor summer feeding, and again fodder shortages.

In the past these things would hit farmers periodically but they could recover relatively quickly with a bit of a dig-out from neighbouring countries. Now we are finding there is something hitting farmers every year and the neighbouring countries are experiencing the same conditions so there is no one who can give the much needed dig-out. With a new problem hitting every year the farmers are not getting the chance to recover from the previous year's unfortunate circumstances.

As far as I’m concerned, we are headed for catastrophe on the scale of the other major extinctions. The wild card is that since we are not just dumb, but also inventive, is there a possibility of our averting disaster by some technical means? I have to assume that once humanity is united on the magnitude and urgency of the threat, (probably meaning several hundred million people are dead or displaced), we attempt to do something about it. And I don’t mean cutting back on carbon emissions, as much as that too makes sense. I mean some huge global geo engineering project: solar radiation management, large scale carbon recapture, etc. Could these work? I wouldn’t count on it, but I believe we’ll be trying them.

I believe we will try, and continue to try to avert disaster. The older I get though, the less confidence I have that we will not precipitate something if only through our lack of understanding the larger schemes of nature. There have been so many people convinced they knew what to do, and years later it was discovered that it was a completely wrong thing and even harmful because there was not a full understanding. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying though. It's what we do.

All of what I said above is not even taking into consideration politics and power dynamics. I don't see how we will ever get around those on a worldwide basis unless it is the way >158 stellarexplorer: says. :(

>158 stellarexplorer:; >159 MrsLee:

But hey! We'll always have Paris. :-)

>156 stellarexplorer: Thank you, and I'm quite sure you'll enjoy this one.

>157 pgmcc: We have many of those issue here, but the consumer often remains unaware because when one area of the country gets slammed another picks up the slack. It's the individual farmers who suffer. :o(

>158 stellarexplorer:, >159 MrsLee: & >160 pgmcc: Well here's yet another passage lifted from the book.

"Underlying certain segments of the environmentalist movement is a sort of existential misanthropy, the idea—even hope—that humans will get what they deserve. That getting spat out by Gaia is just recompense for trashing the planet. These sentiments pop up both in unenlightened online comment sections and in the understandably resigned fatalism of working scientists, many of whom will tell you after a few beers, “We’re fucked.” Indeed, if the worst projections of climate models come to pass, I will admit to feeling a certain fleeting schadenfreude when today’s climate change–denying politicians live to see their home states confronted by rising seas and temperatures. That sort of cruel vindication will of course be tempered by the knowledge of the immense misery visited upon their constituents."

I do get this. We are reaping what we sow, so to speak. Yet I'm under the impression the majority of us, at least in the United States, are will to make sacrifices to stem the tide. Many of our politicians are not. And we refuse to make this issue a litmus test when voting.

>161 clamairy: "existential misanthropy" I have definitely seen that in some of my hippy dippy friends here in California. There are also "existential polyannas" who figure someone in the Silicon Valley will figure out a quick fix and they're not worried.

Such a strange time to be alive.

>162 littlegeek: I suspect all times are strange in their own ways. The difference being that there are so many more people in our time, and we seem to celebrate or at least display almost any and all strangeness to the world. For example, how the hell did Flat Earthers get back into the public eye and gain a foothold?

>163 clamairy: Along those lines, those who are unaffected will have front row seats for the coming disasters. Not my chosen form of entertainment, but it’ll be what’s on.

So I’m reading The Ends of the World now, and here are a few of my favorite lines, so far:

“To get to a mass extinction, you first need victims.”

“Google it, and prepare to be underwhelmed.”

“A fresh-faced and affable scientist who speaks the Queen’s English, Darroch sticks out among the crowd of goateed, mildly autistic, middle-aged, midwestern American males that haunt stateside geology conferences.” (sic - I think that ought to be “who haunt”)

>164 stellarexplorer: I'll have a front row seat for the next decade or so. Then I suspect I'll have a lovely water view. I'm paying very close attention to which streets in my neighborhood flood when it rains.

>165 stellarexplorer: A quick pendantic point - "that" is correct, in my opinion, because it refers to "the crowd" (which is not a person but a thing, albeit a thing composed of persons), rather than to the "Midwestern American males" (who would be "who").

>165 stellarexplorer: I do appreciate this man's sense of humor. I can't remember the last time I left so many notes in a Kindle book on such a serious topic that had more to do with how hard I laughed than they did with certain facts I wanted to find quickly.

>167 -pilgrim-: I concur.

"I think "that {haunt)" ought to be "WHO haunt" (165)

I can't think what, if any, is the SEMANTIC difference
between "who" and "that" (both will cover either number
or gender). What is your idea of the difference,
@stellarexplorer?

>167 -pilgrim-: I see your point, and that was no doubt the intent. The perfectly appropriate use of “haunt” describing what the (plural) crowd does, somehow sounded unnatural to my ear.

>169 rolandperkins: Semantically, no difference. More of an ear thing. Although my ear certainly may need to be adjusted... :)

Semantically, no difference (171)

Thanks, @stellarexplorer. When college ageI\ noticed that John
Milton was inclined to use "that", and I was surprisd, but
without any thought that there could be a semantic difference
--just didn't sound "Miltonic" to me.

So, I had no intention of reading The Ends of the World but I'm always open to books on serious topics written by someone with a dry sense of humour. And so it is added to my list.

I very intentionally don't live at sea level. Currently I'm at +21 metres, but am a bit worried that water pipes, electric mains, and so on will get flooded regardless of were I live.

Our dependency on electricity is what worries me the most. During the last war most trees in the city was cut down for firewood (we have lots of trees now, but most were planted in the 50's or later) but nowadays there's no stoves to burn them in. We do have an open fire hearth, though, but it's not exactly made for cooking...

Not that I think about it every day, misanthropy will not help. But.

(Edited, because spelling and word wasn’t my thing earlier today, it seems.)

>173 Busifer: I'm not at sea level, but only at about 20 ft above. I also worry about fresh water access and electricity. My plan is to add solar panels in the next couple of years. My neighbor here has them and he says he uses very little of the public supply. I'll probably add a propane generator as well, because of the hurricane risk. I'm not sure what my options are for water. Rain barrels might be a good start, at least for watering my herbs and veggies. Maybe someone will perfect small desalinization units.

I hope you enjoy the book. :o)

>174 clamairy: I have a friend who lives near you who, depending on your point of view, is either proactive or obsessed. His solar array powers everything in his home, including the pump for a well water. And in addition to extensive vegetable gardens, he has a year’s worth of freeze dried food for four. He also anticipates having to defend his turf, and is equipped for that too...

>175 stellarexplorer: If it reaches the defend your turf phase I'm not sure I want to be on the planet any more.

>176 clamairy: Yep. Then it becomes like many dystopian post-apocalyptic novels I’d rather read than live.

>174 clamairy: A cistern is a fair choice. I had one put in when I put my septic system in. It's the same concrete poured tank, just slightly modified. Collects rain from my metal roof, with a first rinse discard feature.

People in my world have been talking about community preparedness recently too.

>175 stellarexplorer: I can't even. I've always said I will be one of the first ones to go, because I have a difficult time making appointments 3 months out. It always brings me to a stand still when the receptionist asks if such and such a day half a year away will be alright at such and such a time. Huh?

So planning for a year of survival is one of those things my brain can't grasp. Even earthquake preparedness or wildfire preparedness fuddles me. I mean, so you pack all these things into a bag, then the bag goes where? Where you can easily grab it. Then time passes, nothing happens. You are supposed to remember to change out all the supplies once a year or more, well, I would be lucky if I remember where I stashed the bag, because it damn sure isn't going to be sitting by my front door all that time.

I suppose I am a fatalist or something. I either survive or I don't, and I will deal with either one when I come to it. :P

>179 MrsLee: Haha, I'm also like you. My husband is super organized and for all I know he has an emergency kit stashed somewhere, but I have never bothered.

My house was destroyed in an earthquake when I was 10 and we made out all right. Maybe that's why?

>174 clamairy: Quiet giggle. I live at 540 m above sea level, and used to work at 30 m. Which latter worried me after Dec. 2004 and the Thailand tsunami. But more to the point: a year or three ago when we were enduring seriously bad "load-shedding", there was a rash of upmarket developments in our area whose main selling point was that they were "completely off the grid -- no load-shedding, ever".

>178 2wonderY:, I love the idea of a cistern. When my mom was still alive the well here started to go dry so this house has town water. When the water levels rise the wells out here will most likely end up contaminated with salt water anyway. But I hate relying solely on town water. A cistern would be a great way to water plants without chlorine, etc.

>177 stellarexplorer:, >179 MrsLee:, >180 littlegeek: I'm pretty sure I had a bag ready after 9-11, but it was just water & granola bars. No space blankets or MREs. Now I have bupkis packed or planned. In a pinch I could easily grab water, and protein bars, cat food & dog food. But now I literally have nowhere to run without taking a ferry, or driving 90 miles into NYC and taking a bridge. Neither one of those escape routes will be easily accessible. I guess I'm toast. (Or zombie food, or something equally unpleasant.)

>181 hfglen: I've only lost power here for a couple seconds since I moved in last August, and that was during a particularly nasty Nor'easter. *knocks wood* Hurricane season is upon us, though.

I’d (semi-facetiously) give the same advice I give Manhattanites: get an inflatable dingy to make your way across the Sound. I don’t know what happens next, but at least you’re no longer trapped. Manhattanites should row across the Hudson to New Jersey ;)?

>183 stellarexplorer: Well, yes. (Or small catamaran. Or even a paddle board.) But I have animals I'm not willing to abandon.

>184 clamairy: Can they be trained to accept a dingy or catamaran?

>185 stellarexplorer: The dog can be trained to almost anything. The cat? Ha! I could drug her, I suppose.

The Raven Tower was a great choice to cleanse my palate after all of that extinction business. This is a well-crafted book, with solid world building. Though I have to admit it took me a while to figure out just who was narrating. The book was so good that when I tried to dive right into something else right away it 'tasted bad,' so to speak.

Many thanks to @jillmwo and the rest of you (@Busifer, @Narilka, @tardis, @NorthernStar, & @littlegeek, among others!) for the recommendation.

Hi Clare! Just starting my pub rounds this month. Gorgeous photos! We’re planning on visiting Hawai’i at the end of this year.

>58 clamairy: I suspect Mr. P himself.

>187 clamairy: I liked that one too.

Got to dash, sorry...

>188 humouress: You might be right! (Or at the very least it was one of his minions.)

Edited to add: Enjoy Hawaii! (You added that bit after I posted. LOL)

>187 clamairy: Glad you liked it :)

>190 Narilka: I had no idea what to expect, and it's not like any other fantasy I've read before. (Though there is a whiff of American Gods about it, if only in the way the gods interact with each other.)

Edited for touchstone.

I've moved on to The City of Brass and I was sucked right in.

>192 clamairy: :-)

>189 clamairy: Thank you. We’re hoping to visit Hawai’i, Maui and Oahu.

>192 clamairy: I keep seeing that one in the bookshop. How is it?

>192 clamairy:

When you have read it you may be interested in viewing some of the comments on the following thread:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/308721#6872333

>194 humouress: I'm sure you'll love them all.
I've been enjoying this one quite a bit so far.

>195 pgmcc: Yes, thank you. I'd already starred it, but I am avoiding all those spoilers.

>196 clamairy: I do! We went to Maui on our honeymoon and Big Island when we lived in NY. Oahu, of course, is where we fly in to and have a look around. This time, I'm excited about showing it off to the kids.

>197 humouress: How exciting for them! Mine loved it and didn't want to leave. I have only been to Honolulu to transfer flights. At some point I'll visit the rest of the islands. I did spend a day snorkelling on Molokai, which is incredible.

While I'm reading The City of Brass I'm having Alexa play Middle Eastern instrumental music. :o)

>198 clamairy: Nice touch with the music.

I have both of those books on my kindle but I refuse to read them until the 3rd one comes out. Been burned too many times. Plus, I forget the details. Rather read them all in a row, or close to it.

>200 littlegeek: I thought about doing that, but I often find myself getting rather sick of an author's style if I read too many books in a row. I'm better leaving at least a few books in between as a palate cleanser.

>199 pgmcc: Thank you.

Finished off The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins this afternoon. I'm giving this four stars, but it might have gotten a higher rating if the female narrator hadn't grated on me. I'm not entirely sure what it was about her tone, but I believe the word supercilious best describes the vibe I was picking up. Even Richard himself started to sound a bit smug at times, especially when he was pointing out various critics' comments on earlier editions of this work. Criticisms that have since been found wanting, apparently. ;o) I especially loved the section on memes.

I've already moved on to Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery narrated by the author, Scott Kelly. I am a huge fan of the space-faring Kelly twins, one of whom is running for Senator in Arizona.

Was the woman Lala Ward? If so she is an actress and also Dawkins’s wife. She narrated another book with him and I found her a bit grating as well. And Lala? Sounds like a two year old mispronouncing something. Oy

>203 Bookmarque: Yes, it was Lalla Ward. I didn't realize the relationship, and now it makes so much more sense. She wasn't particularly good, so apparently it's a case of rampant nepotism.

Yeah I think that’s it. She certainly didn’t add anything positive.

>205 Bookmarque: Well I just looked at her author page here on LT and she looks like a 14 year old, and now I feel compelled to do some googling about this February/December marriage of theirs.

Turns out there is only a ten year difference in their ages, so either it's an old photo or there's been a bit of photo-shopping involved.

It’s a very old photo.

Several decades, I suspect.

I knew her as the wife of Tom Baker (the Fifth Doctor) and the 2nd (from the viewers point of view) incarnation of the Time Lord Romana. It has been suggested that nepotism was involved there as well. I had not realised that she has also been married to Dawkins.

>203 Bookmarque: Lalla is her stage name, not the one her parents gave her. It DOES come from her, as a toddler, mispronouncing her real name (according to Wikipedia, anyway). Nicknames stick...

>209 -pilgrim-: I did not know that either, and I'm sure it was involved.

I think it's time for a new thread.