What have you read lately?

[Morden]

I often reread if I've enjoyed something. I find I miss a lot of details a first time through because I'm reading too fast for plot (but I won't reread the whole series in this case).

[apl68]

The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane.  A milestone in the development of modernist fiction in its depiction of events through the psychological impressions of a Civil War soldier seeing battle for the first time.  This sort of treatment remains a common, even standard, form of narrative today.  It's amazing that a writer in his early 20s who had never personally seen combat could create such a vivid impression of the chaos of battle.  A lot of writing that we see today, about combat and other things, owes a debt to Crane.

This is one of those much-taught works that you can find all over the place in assorted paperback editions.  The one I read, though, is a vintage Modern Library edition with well-preserved book jacket that I found on a browsing expedition while on vacation this spring.  When I lived in the big city many years ago, toiling in the lower reaches of academia, I used to sigh over the shelves of collectible Modern Library volumes at a certain bookstore.  I couldn't afford the modest collectible prices.  In recent years I've had the chance to collect a few well-preserved examples of Modern Library's lovely 20th-century graphic art book design.


West With the Night, by Beryl Markham.  Markham's memoir contains a late chapter of the same title that our class read in middle school reading class over 40 years ago.  It depicted how she became the first to fly a solo westbound transatlantic flight from England.  Markham had long since slipped into obscurity by this time, but this chapter somehow made it into our junior high-level reader.  I was startled sometime later to read in the newspaper that the octogenarian author was then still alive.  It was around that time that her memoir was rediscovered and put back into print.

Her record-breaking flight only occupies that one chapter.  She had lots more to talk about from the first half of her life--among other things, growing up on a horse farm in Kenya, training race horses, and becoming probably the first ever woman to serve as a professional bush pilot.  A lot of remarkable experiences, vividly told.  It's a shame she was not as well remembered as Amelia Earhart. 

I have a copy of that old school reader, and was able to compare its version of the transatlantic flight account with the chapter in the memoir.  What I read all those years ago was slightly condensed.  One or two words had been Americanized.  The reader's illustrations of Markham and her aircraft bear only a vague resemblance to the real thing.  I thought I recalled the illustrations depicting a twin-engine aircraft instead of the actual single.  Maybe in my memory I confused it with a picture of A.E.'s Lockheed Electra?  Funny how your memory works.

[Istiblennius]

Just finished book 9 of The Expanse--I thought it was well done, and now would like to reread the first one again. But I agree--some of the middle volumes were difficult to get into.

I also recently finished book 9. Completely agree with your assessment. They really stuck the landing I thought.

[Parasaurolophus]

September:

Robert T. Bakker - The Dinosaur Heresies: New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of the Dinosaurs and Their Extinction: A hugley influential classic which made the case for dinosaur endothermy. It's a delight to read--Bakker is a great writer, and the book is extremely accessible to lay audiences. He also packed it with illustrations--one every two or three pages!--which makes it extra fun to read. Many of the illustrations are really clever ways of conveying complex information; others are just cool paleoart. A few of his theses are outdated, and the final chapter on the cretaceous extinction has aged particularly poorly, but for the most part it's impressive how much of it is still perfectly current. It does, however, feature some heavily teleological talk about evolution and natural selection--I couldn't tell if this was just Bakker writing for a more popular audience, or if it's a genuine problem with his understanding of it all (though that would be par for the course for the eighties). This was an absolute joy to read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who's interested in dinosaurs.

Jamie Glowacki - Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right: This seems like one of the better books on the subject. It was fine--repetitive, but I guess you need that.


I nearly finished two others, but didn't quite get there, so they'll be in the October report.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Donut Economics by Kate Raworth

This book  critiques mainstream economics and introduces a new model for sustainable development in the 21st century. It is a good read and fairly comprehensive. It is also a little superficial, but this is by necessity given the amount of ground it covers.

There is a lot of interest in the model that the book covers in some circles and some cities are even experimenting with it: https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics

[apl68]

I remember when The Dinosaur Heresies came out.  I never have actually read it.  I ought to check it out sometime.

[Parasaurolophus]

I remember when The Dinosaur Heresies came out.  I never have actually read it.  I ought to check it out sometime.

Totally! You'll gobble it down in no time flat.

Honestly, it's probably more fun to read now than it was at the time, since we have the benefit of hindsight.

[FishProf]

Honestly, it's probably more fun to read now than it was at the time, since we have the benefit of hindsight.

I teach out of that book.  It is great for showing both the debates within science, and how they get resolved by, gasp, more data!

[Parasaurolophus]

Honestly, it's probably more fun to read now than it was at the time, since we have the benefit of hindsight.

I teach out of that book.  It is great for showing both the debates within science, and how they get resolved by, gasp, more data!

Oh, that's really cool!

I imagine the lost/found bone growth rate stuff also makes for a fun classroom discussion.

[jimbogumbo]

Honestly, it's probably more fun to read now than it was at the time, since we have the benefit of hindsight.

I teach out of that book.  It is great for showing both the debates within science, and how they get resolved by, gasp, more data!

Do either of you know Jim Farlow?

Oh, that's really cool!

I imagine the lost/found bone growth rate stuff also makes for a fun classroom discussion.

[Parasaurolophus]

I don't think so--is there anything in particular by him you'd recommend?

[jimbogumbo]

I don't think so--is there anything in particular by him you'd recommend?

I'm not qualified to say- obviously it's you and FishProf's area. I just know him pretty well, and know what he does re dino trackways.

[jimbogumbo]

Doh! Sorry!  You are a philosopher, right? I made an assumption due to poor memory!

Jim has a book he wrote for the kid market, but really is a straight researcher for all his other writing.

[Parasaurolophus]

I don't think so--is there anything in particular by him you'd recommend?

I'm not qualified to say- obviously it's you and FishProf's area. I just know him pretty well, and know what he does re dino trackways.

Doh! Sorry!  You are a philosopher, right? I made an assumption due to poor memory!

Jim has a book he wrote for the kid market, but really is a straight researcher for all his other writing.

Oh! Haha. Yes, I'm just a philosopher (which explains why I'm such a pain in everyone's ass.) I'm on friendly emailing terms with a few dinosaur peeps, but not Farlow, I'm afraid.

It turns out I do have The Complete Dinosaur, which he co-edited, but I haven't read any of it yet, although I'm excited to do so soon. It's a hefty tome, is all.

[apl68]

The Mystery of Gaither Cove, by Capwell Wyckoff.  I was a big fan of juvenile mysteries growing up.  Some of the ones I read were quite old, since our local library's junior section was not really up-to-date.  Once in a while I still read a vintage juvenile mystery that catches my eye.  I found this one during my spring trip to Ohio.    The publisher, Saalfield, was actually based there back in the day.

Juvenile mysteries, especially 90-year-old ones, tend not to be that well-written.  I've seen a number of exceptions to that.  This is not one of them.  It does hold interest.  I was startled to find the book's young protagonists taking a long road trip--a real undertaking back in 1932--to the Ozark Mountains in my home state of Arkansas.  Books set in Arkansas are few and far between, and the older ones tend to take a rather...patronizing view of the state and its inhabitants (True Grit, by Arkansas native Charles Portis, is a rare exception--it's mostly set outside Arkansas, but the protagonist is a very recognizable character type to any Arkansan my age or older). 

This one doesn't.  It has some "local color," all right, but the land and people of Arkansas are portrayed in a rather good light, without much of the exoticism or patronizing stereotypes you would normally have seen.  At times Capwell Wyckoff (I suspect a pseudonym here) sounds almost like a local booster.  Well, the Ozarks do indeed have a lot of scenic beauty.  One scene, where some of the youths are caught in a flash flood while camping near the Buffalo River, hit kind of close to home.  Some years back a number of people lost their lives when a flash flood hit a campground on the Little Missouri River in the Ouachita Mountains, south of the Ozarks.  It's an all too real hazard for campers along mountain rivers.  I didn't personally know anybody caught in that flood, but I've gone backpacking nearby.  For people all over the state the tragedy felt like it had happened next door.