qebo's 2009 books

1. Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orlando

Well, it seems legit to belong to two book challenge groups. I joined the 999 Challenge yesterday, because I like the idea of categories, but in perusing options I recognized folks here from other groups. So. I have several books in progress, and I have a tendency to read a few chapters and abandon for greener grass. I began this book yesterday, and finished it today. I stumbled upon a reference in some blog I don't recall, which linked to a post in the blog Coding Horror. I am a former computer programmer, more a technical than an artsy sort, but the excerpt struck a chord, I bought the book, plopped it onto a growing pile of miscellaneous unshelved books, and there it sat until I unburied it yesterday during a session of entering books into LibraryThing.

(Edited to fix touchstone, which apparently dislikes the ampersand.)

Welcome to the group, qebo!

2: Thanks! (And I'm impressed that you're taking the time to greet all who enter.) I have doubts that I'll read 75 books this year, but I have hopes that I'll read less haphazardly if I'm monitoring the process.

Just monitoring the process is an admirable goal. And you never know, you may surprise yourself!

2. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

This was kinda low hanging fruit, in that I actually began it on Christmas and was midway through when 2009 arrived. I bought it at the train station (yes, I already had a book in my coat pocket, but the book store was open and I had time to swing through) on my way to the family gathering. I read The Tipping Point awhile back, so I expected a balance of entertaining and thought-provoking (and was not disappointed). For reading on the train, I want a book that I won't regret being held captive to, when I don't have 1000 alternatives plus the internet on hand.

For a flavor of the book, a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell that is a reconfigured version of a chapter.

qebo
Welcome! It doesn't matter if you complete the goal, learning about books that are read and comments shared is the most interesting part of the group.

3. Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen.

I finally finished this yesterday. I began it probably several months ago, set it aside not intentionally but because it was in a bag I'd used while traveling, stumbled upon it recently and put it in my coat pocket. It has been subway reading this month, in snippets of ten minutes here and there, not the best way to read it.

Anyway. More than I ever wanted to know about Magellan et al, and I have not retained much of the detail. What I have retained is an impression of how very arduous the voyage was. And the intricacies of the politics of the time.

For example, scurvy. Vitamin C is needed to synthesize collagen, which holds body tissues together. Without it, the body literally disintegrates. Scurvy was new to Europeans, a common and dangerous and feared feature of long voyages. Europeans did not discover a cure for over two centuries, even though there was ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that eating various fruits prevented the disease or resulted in quick recovery, and even though European explorers encountered Arab traders who gave them oranges. In our modern world of scientific thinking, this seems shocking and sad.

4. Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer

Another book that became subway reading, and that would have been better in longer stretches. Yikes, they're everywhere, but maybe more interesting than the parasites themselves is how scientists figure out their life cycles, or figure out how parasite knows where to go when. There are photos, though not enough IMO, and I wished for diagrams.

5. Economics Explained by Robert Heilbroner & Lester Thurow

It is what it claims to be: an introduction to economics. How does capitalism differ from traditional economic systems? What have prominent economists (Smith, Marx, Keynes) of the past contributed to the present? What are broad areas of agreement and disagreement among economists? What are macro- and micro? What is money? What kinds of things do markets do well and poorly? I confess that I merely skimmed the final section on modern problems, which I gather was appended to the previous edition, because it had the aura of being not quite what I was after, and possibly dated (this edition is a decade old). The book served its purpose of providing an overview, and has hopefully prepared me to tackle a small stack of books that delve more deeply.

qebo, Parasite Rex was one of those books that changed the way I view the world. The strategies of some parasites just boggled my brain. Like one of the biologists mentioned in the book who said that he didn't see pigeons as pigeons any more but as walking and flying collections of parasites. Some of the things they're finding in the human genome that was once considered 'junk DNA' is old leftover parasite DNA that makes up what it takes to grow a modern human.

His recent book Microcosm continues the weirdness. The human genome has around 30,000 genes and three billion base pairs. However, if all the bacterial and parasitical life forms that live inside and on a human have their DNA added up it out totals the human DNA. Bizarre.

I've read Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers which highlights the big ideas in economics. I thought it was pretty good. After the big ideas economics seems to become a theory of minutia that is ever being adjusted. I still remember one of Heilbroner's Heilbronerisms- Wealth is static, capital is dynamic.

10: The Worldly Philosophers is on of the books in my TBR stack(s). It's possibly next in line, because it expands (more economists, and more about each) on the very brief summary in Economics Explained.

The strategies of parasites are indeed bizarre. Some parasites go through stages so different that people didn't realize they were the same organism. And then there's parasite navigation -- how it figures out where to go. Out in the big wide world, an organism may follow a gradient, sense a substance from afar and move toward higher concentrations. A parasite inside a body can't do this because the system is closed and substances have nowhere to spread. So parasites rely more on triggers -- encounter this, do that. There's a description of a scientist testing all sorts of substances on a particular parasite over a period of years before he had this epiphany.

I love these descriptions of scientists at work. There's a wonderful book that I read last year: Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner, which describes the clever experiments and constructions of miniature apparatus to figure out the genetic basis of fruit fly behavior.

fascinating subjects you've been reading about, qebo. i'm taking note of some titles mentioned above. looking forward to what u think of The Worldly Philosophers and your other economics-related reads.

6. The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

This is an absorbing book about Warsaw during WWII. Its focus is on zookeepers Jan and Antonia Zabinski, members of the Polish Underground, which fought against Nazi occupation and helped Jews escape. Much of the information comes from her memoirs, so anecdotes are told from her point of view, as the more house bound of the couple, caring for two young children as well as, by the end of the war, some 300 people who stayed at the zoo for long and short durations, living with false identities in the house, or hidden in the cages. The zoo itself was destroyed during the war, most of the animals killed or taken to other zoos, and what remained was an assortment of small animals kept as pets, and others raised for fur or food -- per Nazi command, or as a useful cover for surreptitious activities (collecting scraps to feed the pigs was an excuse to transport food (pork -- who would guess) into the Ghetto). The strength of the book is its details of daily life -- the variety of people (a sculptor, a collector of insects) who passed through the house or remained in the Ghetto, observations of animal behavior, negotiations with officials and visitors who might be friend or enemy, small rebellions (the signal for house guests to hide was a piano tune by a Jewish composer) and acts of courage.

book #6 sound good, I hope to read it soon as my library has a copy.

The Zookeeper's Wife has been on my wishlist for quite some time now -- your review certainly justifies its place there! Looking forward to finally getting my hands on a copy. :)

gebo
Thanks for your well written review of The Zookeeper's Wife. I hope to read this in 2009.

7. The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt & David Thomas

This was an interesting experience because I don't recall ever reading a computer programming book straight through. I'm in the process of segueing back after a few years away, and this was a good route to take -- once familiar advice packaged succinctly, with enough new and enough detail to stretch me a bit into the modern world. I did not do the exercises at the end of each section. Can I still claim that I read it? This is the sort of book that I would typically have on hand as reference, but a reference book is of course more useful if you kinda know what's in it.

8. Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

I read The Gold Bug Variations maybe 10-12 years ago and loved it, probably bought this book shortly afterward, but it has languished in a box through several moves. I loved this book not as much, couldn't say why because the other was so long ago. There are two interwoven strands: the life of character Richard Powers from his days as a student to his return to the same university as a successful novelist, especially his relationship with C, which began and ended during the same time period; and his encounter with a group of scientists studying consciousness, especially his immersion in a project to teach a neural net to read and interpret literature. To what extent is the machine conscious? To what extent is human behavior a repertoire of patterns and responses? Questions more played with than answered here. More significant for this novel is maybe to what extent are the people using this project, this relationship with a machine, to consider and resolve their relationships with other people?

A note re the book challenge: as possibly befits a novel about (stream of) consciousness, there are no chapter divisions, no clear breaks for pacing.

Richard Powers is one of my favorite authors. The Gold Bug Variations is such an amazing, complex, huge book and has so much going on in it that Galatea 2.2, may seem simple to read compared to The Gold Bug Variations. They are very different books, but I liked them both very much.

9. The Worm Book by Loren Nancarrow and Janet Hogan Taylor

I am in the process of buying a house -- with a yard! I've never owned a real yard. And it's almost spring, and I had to run an errand near a book store yesterday. So I now possess a half dozen books about gardening. This is a cute little book about earthworms. It has a chapter on earthworm biology with pretty and informative drawings, several chapters on maintaining an earthworm bin, a chapter on critters that are found in the vicinity of earthworms, a chapter on homegrown methods of discouraging various pests. Also a chapter with earthworm recipes which, setting aside the squeamishness factor, I will ignore because the methods for killing earthworms seem cruel (freezing or boiling). In sum, a useful book even if I never raise earthworms deliberately, but just want to be aware of what's going on in my yard.

Wait. Earthworm recipes? Yuck. But the book appeals to my 'I want to know everything about everything!' side. :)

21: Yuck indeed. The recipes are normal foods with ground or chopped earthworms added for protein. Maybe I'd try them without the earthworms. I'm not that desperate for protein.

10. Mid-Atlantic Home Landscaping by Roger Holmes and Rita Buchanan

I don't know how an experienced gardener would view this book, but for me it is just right. It has three sections: landscape plans for various common situations in city and suburb (in the shade, against a fence, at the curb, etc.), instructions for buiding features (paths, pools, trellises, etc.), descriptions and photos of plants (all chosen to be robust, low maintenance, non-invasive to neighbors). It's more a reference book than a reading book, but I did in fact read it from beginning to end, skimming the brief descriptions of plants that are repeated with each landscape plan that includes them (not a flaw in the book -- each landscape plan is intended to stand alone, and it'd be annoying to have to flip back and forth to the full descriptions). For me, a complete novice, the landscape plans are helpful. Not that I'll adhere to them precisely or anywhere near, but since I have no idea how to go about selecting one plant, let alone multiple plants that have to coexist in an aesthetically pleasing manner, I want very basic information and an array of pictures so I know what qualities I need to consider (e.g. relative heights and seasonal cycles) and can begin to decide what results I'm aiming for. With this book as a starting point, and another book for more detailed reference, I am now much better equipped to scout around on the internet without feeling scattered or overwhelmed. I also like that it is confined to this region of the US, and I'm not looking at lovely pictures and thinking yeah, but, um, winter? There are similar books for other regions.

If anyone has suggestions about what else I might read, I'd welcome them. I'll have a small yard in the city, generally prefer monochromatic color schemes and lots of texture, want to attract birds and butterflies and such, don't want to grow food that has to be harvested.

11. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

This book got me started on the current gardening obsession, though I'd picked it up for the food ethics aspect. The book is organized around a year of food -- producing and preparing. It was an experimental year for the family, eating only foods in season to the extent possible (a few staples could not be found locally produced, and they allowed each family member one nonlocal item -- e.g coffee). The gist: it's a lotta work, and out of it a good writer can extract many amusing and thought provoking anecdotes. There's not much how-to in this book, it's certainly not an experiment for the novice. There is gently polemical commentary about the merits of eating food in season (e.g. it is bred for taste and nutrition rather than storage ability) and locally (less energy dedicated to transportation, more support of community economy). The bit that grabbed me was toward the beginning, a description of various fruits and vegetables categorized by plant part: sprout, leaf, seed, root. At the grocery store, consider what stage a plant was in its life cycle when harvested, and when it must have begun to grow to reach this stage just now, and therefore where it might have come from.

12. Book of Compost by Mike McGrath

A simple straightforward presentation of the basics.

I have some garden books I like, but all Dutch, and as far as I can see not translated.
I like my garden, I have a mix of flowering plants and fruits in the garden.
Blueberries have great autumn colors and are fairly easy to grow.
Anita

Re blueberries, that's nice to know -- I like them, and I've been thinking about trying to grow them, but I am a complete novice and need to start with things that are not easily destroyed.

Do you know there's a LT gardening group? There could be more than one (search is less than ideal), but this is the one I found: http://www.librarything.com/groups/gardening.

thanks, yes I was a member of that group, until this group absorbed most of my time on LT ;-)

13. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

This is a lovely book, clearly and concisely informative. Whenever I was thinking I need a diagram for this, there it was. It's not only your inner fish, it's your inner ancestry back to microbes, but the author is a paleontologist who (along with others) discovered Tiktaalik, a link between water and land animals. I've read a few evo-devo books, so some of this book was familiar, but the scope is broader and the style a focus on essentials without clutter. How do you know where to look for fossils? How and when did the water dweller's fin pattern of bones become the land dweller's leg pattern of bones? How do paleontology, embryology, and genetics show different aspects of the same evolutionary story? How are teeth, feathers, hair, and glands similar, and what does this tell us about their evolutionary history? What is a body, how is ours similar to a sea anemone's, how and why might such a thing have emerged? How do smell, vision, and hearing work, and how have the mechanics been refined over time? This is broad schematic structure rather than deep detail, but exactly the sort of thing I need to make sense of the detail.

Now I suppose I should read The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins, but I am hesitant to commit to 600+ pages...

14. All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

Well, it seems plausible. I am not yet in a position to run experiments.

15. Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon

This was a really helpful book for me, since I was starting from scratch, or nearly so -- I have vague memories of xylem and phloem and gymnosperms and angiosperms from junior high school. The writing style is maybe a tad tedious at times, but the book is nicely arranged with lots of diagrams and corresponding photos of plants as seen normally and cells as seen by microscope. This is the level of detail -- mention of chemistry but focus on organization of cells, and on the basic structures and functions of plants. The emphasis is on angiosperms (flowering plants) with occasional comparisons to gymnosperms, ferns, mosses. Chapters are devoted to growth, nourishment, and reproduction. In additon to the basics are the variants, how roots and stems and leaves and flowers have been modified as plants have adapted to different environments. The result for me is a sense that plants are both simple in their essence and really really weird. Now what I want is a book about plant evolution.

16. Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart

This is a fun as well as informative book about the business of growing and selling cut flowers. The author travels about the world talking to folks who create new varieties, mass produce, and market flowers (the US pales in comparison to other areas of the world, in both volume and style). A huge business that I've been oblivious to, and a business with a long history. As soon as people could get around seasonal fluctuations, they did -- growing in more suitable climates, transporting with climate control. And FTD, wiring flowers, began nearly a century ago, in 1910. An entertaining book, but... no photos! And they'd really be handy. I've never much paid attention to cut flowers, don't know more than a few standard types, and didn't always have the internet available while reading.

gebo
While I don't often post, I do check your thread regularly. I love all these books about gardening and flowers. In my much younger days I was obsessed with perennial gardens. I learned a lot through my errors, in fact I planted mint among the flowers and the mint and all the long underground roots took over. The mint grew to be about two foot tall and that and the bee balm were tenants that simply would not flee long after invading the surroundings.

I just bought house last week -- with a yard, the inspiration for the gardening books. The previous owner told me that shortly after she moved in, she removed the morning glories that had taken over the yard, and replaced them with a lawn. Several neighbors expressed gratitude, because apparently morning glories are prone to invading over quite a distance. News to me. I hope I don't have to learn through errors of inadvertent neighborly aggression.

actually, once you start gardening, my experience was that neighbors stopped by simply to look at the flowers. At certain times in the summer (usually in August) when some of the plants multiplied faster than rabbits, I put buckets of them near the fence with a "For Free" sign. Coreopis was one of the plants that I literally gave away by the hundreds.

I just hope I'll have flowers... At this stage, there's so much interior work to be done before I can move that I haven't been thinking about the yard. But I saw a neighbor out preparing his yard yesterday, and things are beginning to emerge in a narrow strip at the side of the house (are these intentional things or weeds? I don't know), so I'll have to make time soon.

Good luck with the new place - try to find a good nursery close by, for both plants and advice. Everyone seems to find their own niche. I started out focusing on perennials and ended up crazy about herbs. My kids used to roll their eyes when I'd race out of the house in the middle of fixing dinner with a pair of scissors and come back in with a handful of "green stuff" to put in their food.

17. Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

An acquaintance recommended this book recently as an example of hard science fiction. I'm kinda so-so on the book, but then I'm not a fictiony sort of person and YMMV. Indeed there is a layer of real biological action with endogenous retroviruses, along with a glossary, and it has inspired me to delve further. From there the story takes off into speculation -- one such retrovirus is infectious, causes miscarriage of a deformed first stage fetus that produces a fertilized egg that becomes a second stage fetus. Initially, all second stage fetuses are fragile and die. All signs seem to indicate a spreading disease, and the response of the goverment and public is panic, with martial law and riots. Our heroes, however, realize that the retrovirus is not a disease, but a seed that remains latent for thousands of years and wakes up when humanity needs to evolve, and it is creating a new subspecies, mutating rapidly until it can produce viable second stage fetuses that survive until birth and beyond. I scouted around on the internet for reviews by biologists, and the range was wide: one said the story was entertaining and thought provoking, another said the story was unreadable because of its profound misconceptions about evolution. I would have preferred more coherence in the science -- it seemed a bunch of technojargon and then a leap of faith into speculation that included a bit of mumbo jumbo about punctuated equilibrium but lacked details about the process that I'd expect real scientists to be concerned with -- it was the sketchiness that bothered me, not the fictional speculation. And the romance between two main characters was... odd -- they were individuals in separate alternating episodes for half the book, then they met and suddenly poof, they decided to become the parents of a new species, and somehow intuitively knew that their child would be among the first to survive. Conveniently, her husband had committed suicide early in the book, an event that I'd expect to have emotional ramifications deserving of mention. So. There's a sequel, and maybe I'll read it out of curiosity, but I don't feel especially compelled to see what happens next. In scouting around on the internet, however, I've found recommendations for other biological science fiction, and I may give it a shot.

18. Dawkins vs Gould by Kim Sterelny

I was reminded of this book when I wrote the previous review, had started reading it once but set it aside for no memorable reason. And it's short, so just the thing to insert at the end of the month when I'm concerned about my book quota. This book is just what the title says, a summary of the views of Dawkins and Gould, with focus on controversial areas. The two biologists were (Gould died not long after this book was published) engaged in public and not always civil disagreement over issues that to the casual observer might not seem to warrant intense emotion. This book has been criticized for not including the verbal exchanges, which would be more entertaining than summaries, but that's its purpose -- stripped of ego and emotion, what are these guys actually arguing about, and why does it matter?

gebo

Welcome to my world of academia where intelligent people have the hairs on their necks standing up every day!

19. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

In 1860 in England a missing three year old boy was found murdered on the grounds of the family estate, and suspicion fell on the family or close associates because nobody else had access. Scotland Yard detective Jack Whicher was called to investigate. He focused on one member of the family, but without enough evidence for a trial the case remained officially unsolved until a confession and trial five years later. The case was sensationalized, members of the public wrote letters to the police proposing theories, the scenario and the detective became models for the emerging genre of mystery novels. Although the who is not entirely a mystery, the why is rather murky, and becomes more clear as years go by and details about the family are gradually revealed. Although maybe not as satisfying as fiction, because the author couldn't just make up facts and wasn't privy to anyone's mind, the author meticulously reconstructs the murder and its aftermath from the available documents, and sustains suspense to the end.

I really enjoyed this one as well.

I did too.

#41: I bought a copy of the book not long ago. I definitely need to bump it up on the Continent.

Yeah, I really liked it too!

20. Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

In 2000, the author went on an American Fern Society tour to Oaxaca, and kept a journal which, with modifications and additions became this book -- a day by day description of the activities, with the digressions one might expect of Oliver Sacks, whose appeal is his curiosity about everything he encounters: chocolate, tobacco, rubber, Zapotec culture. My knowledge of ferns is woefully limited to a vague generic concept, and this book is not a 101 guide, but an expression of enthusiasm for the many and varied species. The footnotes added several books to my wish list.

21. Genome by Matt Ridley

I plucked this book off a shelf when I was packing to move -- it had been nearly invisible in a corner. When or why I bought it, I cannot recall. I was just idly curious, but learned more than I expected. The book was inspired by the Human Genome Project, but is not about it. It is instead a themed approach to describing how genes work and why we should care. I'm rather behind the times, woefully so because this book was written a decade ago and surely much more is known now. Things have gone far beyond Mendel and his peas, dominant and recessive, the stuff of high school biology. Genes are not just active during development, they keep producing. And there are far too many genes, with far too many entanglements, for coherent presentation to the non-specialist. The themed approach is to focus on one gene on each of the 23 human chromosome pairs, as it influences, for example, disease or memory or aging. Along the way the discussion wends through human evolution, the history of genetics, modern medical issues such as gene screening and gene therapy, philosophical issues such as nature vs nurture. Biological processes are explained in their essence without every tedious chemical step. I wished for diagrams, but then this is my complaint about nearly every book I read. There is an occasional political insertion (the author has a PhD in zoology but was a journalist for The Economist for many years), but not so much as to be irritating. I enjoyed this book for its combination of facts and philosophy and the range in between, will make a point of reading other books by the same author.

Well, April is pretty much shot, and I have near nothing to show for it. I moved -- not far, but to a different city. What with packing and unpacking and bureaucracy and cleaning and driving back and forth, there have been too many distractions to focus. I started a bunch of books but didn't get far in any. (Now where are they...?) I read a lot of magazine articles though, appropriate for my attention span. I hope to redeem myself in May, but there's still painting to be done...

Do you ever get audio books? That could be perfect while painting.

I've never tried an audio book. I generally listen to the radio. Even with short snippets on NPR, I'll miss critical bits because my attention was elsewhere, so I have doubts that I'd be able to follow a story line while multitasking. Worth a try though.

Sure it's worth a try - get something light that doesn't require so much concentration. What have you got to lose?

Good luck with the new place - a new home, especially in a new city, is always exciting.

#41
This sounds like a book I would really like. I'm hoping my local library has a copy. Thanks for your recommendation and well written comments.

#48. Good luck!

Enjoyed catching up on your thread and have added The Zookeeper's Wife and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher to my list. Also enjoyed your comments on Darwin's Radio from the persepective of someone who doesn't read fiction very often. I have it in my library, and think I will still enjoy it, when I get around to it...

53: I'm thinking that I might try the sequel to Darwin's Radio as an audio book (I assume it exists, because the person who recommended Darwin's Radio to me listened to it while commuting to/from work). A kills-two-birds scenario -- runs an experiment with audio books and continues a challenge category, with a book that I'm only mildly interested in so I won't be distressed if I miss some of it.

Try it--the Darwin's Children listening thing. Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children are two books I greatly enjoyed and I'm not that big a Greg Bear fan (having started at least four or five of his other works and never gotten past page 25 or so). I'll look forward to your comments after the "reading."

I am obviously behind, but I enjoyed your comments about Genome, as it's on my list for the 1010 challenge.

#56 I love reading about that subject, and managed to get past qebo's first mention of the book without rushing out to get it. Now, my fingers are itching to hop over to the library catalog and place a hold. I'm going to try to resist until I see your comments about it in the 1010 challenge before actually actually getting the book, but I'm adding it to my wishlist just so no one forgets about it!