What have you read lately?

[FishProf]

I'm actually teaching a course on Dinosaurs right now and I have to update this stuff (at least) weekly.

It's fun to study fields where what we "know" is ion a reasonable state of flux.

I'd hate to be doing cosmology lectures right now.

What sorts of students to you get in a course on dinosaurs?  Are they taking the class because it sounds interesting, or is this something they're required to do?

This class is a non-majors, Science with a Lab general elective, so I usually get students who need it to graduate and have put it off as long as they can.   However, I have been teaching it for a decade+ and the reputation that it is hard has permeated the culture.  SO my students are generally engaged.  The Criminal Justice department steers their majors this way, as does business.

There is also a Majors-only Vertebrate Paleontology class, and that is a much different critter.

[apl68]

For extinct creatures of more recent times, it's hard to beat The End of the Megafauna, by Ross MacPhee and Peter Schouten.  It's a beautifully illustrated guide to the fantastic creatures of only a few millennia ago--mammoths, mastodons, and other proboscids; monster birds; even giant turtles discovered recently enough to be known as "Ninja turtles."  To me, the more recent creatures are at least as interesting as the dinosaurs.

[archaeo42]

I recently finished How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. I enjoyed it until the last 85ish% of the book when the climax seemed rushed, seemingly out of nowhere, and some characters seemed to just make decisions that didn't fit with how the author had written them. Things were resolved at a pace seemingly not in line with how things were built up. Or, it would have been nice to have alternate narration by the main character's daughter in relevant places so she doesn't just show up out of nowhere.

[FishProf]

Neil Patrick Harris' Choose Your Own Autobiography

[Parasaurolophus]

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Semiosis, and Space Prison arrived in the mail recently, and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into them!

But before I fall too far behind again, here was May's small haul:

David Bischoff – Time Machine 2: Search for Dinosaurs: I haven't read this since I was eight or ten or so (i.e. part of the book's intended audience). It was a delight. It's wonderfully and cleverly put together, and I quite literally went through every page in the book on my quest to photograph an archaeopteryx. Lots of gear from the future got left behind in the past, but the story didn't seem to notice. I even got stuck in the very same super-frustrating loop I was stuck in the last time I read this!

Alastair Reynolds – Bone Silence: This is the last of Reynolds's space pirate trilogy. And while I was happy to return to this delightful storyworld and these characters, I have to confess that the whole thing felt pretty rushed to me. Reynolds just pushed me through too much story in too few pages. The first in this series is brilliant, but I'm afraid there's a steady decline where the next two are concerned. Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed it. Just not as much I should have, given the givens.

Becky Chambers – A Closed and Common Orbit: This was brilliant and just lovely, although the Owl storyline is pretty heartbreaking. I loved every minute of it. It's a loose sequel to A Long, Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, although it's really just set in the same universe. It's vastly superior to the first novel, which was fun but not quite there yet. It was just great!

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Not much to say, except of course that it's brilliant and hilarious. I've read it twice before, once as a teen and once as an early adult. It still holds up and, unsurprisingly, is a lot richer now that I know more about everything.

[traductio]

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Semiosis, and Space Prison arrived in the mail recently, and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into them!

I had to read your sentence twice before I realized you were talking about three different books, rather than one. I'm sad it's not one book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Semiosis, and Space Prison. I was going to order myself a copy based on the title alone.

[Parasaurolophus]

I had to read your sentence twice before I realized you were talking about three different books, rather than one. I'm sad it's not one book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Semiosis, and Space Prison. I was going to order myself a copy based on the title alone.

!

It's not too late to follow up your scammy journal submission with a scammy book proposal...

[apl68]

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Semiosis, and Space Prison arrived in the mail recently, and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into them!

I had to read your sentence twice before I realized you were talking about three different books, rather than one. I'm sad it's not one book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Semiosis, and Space Prison. I was going to order myself a copy based on the title alone.

And here we thought Allan Sokal had a new book out!

[RatGuy]

I just read an email that said that subcutaneous microchips were predicted by the Bible. So far it's better than Pacific Vortex that a colleague recommended.

And I'm nearly through with the Watchmen graphic novel. I know, I know.

[mamselle]

It's tattooing, I think, that is supposed to transfer the number of the Beast (666) to the forehead and hand of the anti-elect (my term) in John's Revelation (14:9).

I don't think they had micro-chipping then....

M.

[apl68]

Does your copy of the original book show any of the paintings or the pen-and-ink drawings?

Those are amazing in and of themselves.

I am pretty sure I saw these at one point:

   https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/53892

This is also an oft-reproduced work:

   https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/25532

M.

Just found the copy I got from a friend for use as a teaching resource.

It's Seidensticker's paperback, an abridged tranlation with reproduced woodcuts based, per the publication info, on the 17th c. artist Y. Shunsho's work for a 1650 pub. by E. G. Monogatari.

The cover has two color scenes from the Met's screen (referenced above); I'm thinking the woodcuts were informed by/based on the paintings at Yale (or, depending on an unclear chronology, the other way 'round), since both feature several scenes with protruding corners of porches, dias(es), etc. into the center space.

Anyway, there are worthy visual sources at hand...a kid interested in manga or anime might like to explore these as precursorial elements.

M.

By the way, I never properly finished thanking you for linking these.  I loved looking at them!  The way the blacks were spotted in some of those was strikingly like some modern graphic art.  Oddly enough, some of it reminded me of the work of Crockett Johnson, of Barnaby and Harold and the Purple Crayon fame.

[mamselle]

You're welcome!

It strikes me that a class on literary works and their visual counterparts in India, China, Korea, and Japan would make an interesting interdisciplinary course. It might even be library-specific, if the library has large, seminar-type classrooms--in a year or two, once we've worked out our co-operative lifestyle vis-a-vis The Virus, that is--ascwell as online, for the moment.

A selection of the Hindu myths (focused on 1-3 stories and their iconographic depictions--say, representations of the cow herders flirting with the blue god, Krishna, etc.), Buddhist writings (paired with discussions of the mudras in visual arts, as compared with dance) and the formulaic/triadic representations of members of those pantheons, (as well as the Jains), in India; and the spread and interaction of Buddhism with Chinese and Japanese systems, reading Lao T'tsu, Confucius, and myths from the T'ang and Sung dynasties-while looking at their sculpture and paintings and the wondrous 9-ft Dragon Scroll; then considering Korean and Japanese stories and the great pen-and-ink drawing in the original scroll of the "Tale of Choju-Giga" and comparing it with the (later) representations of Gen-Ji.

You could do all this online, in fact; if in place, the class might meet in the library so the larger art history books could be passed around the table while speakers from the various linguistic disciplines presented their papers and led discussions; comparative forms in visual and verbal sources could also be treated in the contexts of danced and dramatized representations of these tales as well.

Another lifetime, another day....

Syllabi RUs....

M.

[Economizer]

PLUM ISLAND, Nelson DeMille, 1997. An informative read for those still alive in 2020. The fiction novel includes gore, murder, NYC vicinities, a very likeable smartass NYC detective, the farthest reaches of Long Island, NY, taunting and titillating sexual encounters, intellectual scientists, government agents, rivalries, TOP SECRET bioscience labs, plus pirate lore and much, much more. No mention of butlers but I've not yet finished reading the book.. it is still quite a mystery to me!

[marshwiggle]

It's tattooing, I think, that is supposed to transfer the number of the Beast (666) to the forehead and hand of the anti-elect (my term) in John's Revelation (14:9).

I don't think they had micro-chipping then....

M.

My apologies if I'm incorrect, but I believe you'll remember Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" in the 70's, which was kind of a high water mark of sci-fi-ish speculations about historical mysteries and/or prophecies and what they "really mean" now. (Also, Hal Lindsey's stuff in conservative Christian circles.)

There was a little bit of stuff like that coming up to Y2K, and a bit more before "the end" of the Mayan calendar in 2012, but I don't think either of those quite compare...

[RatGuy]

PLUM ISLAND, Nelson DeMille, 1997. An informative read for those still alive in 2020. The fiction novel includes gore, murder, NYC vicinities, a very likeable smartass NYC detective, the farthest reaches of Long Island, NY, taunting and titillating sexual encounters, intellectual scientists, government agents, rivalries, TOP SECRET bioscience labs, plus pirate lore and much, much more. No mention of butlers but I've not yet finished reading the book.. it is still quite a mystery to me!

If you like John Corey, the author reuses that character a few more times -- notably in the wake of 9/11