As part of cleaning the office, the Mister has been organizing our books and it has become very clear that we own a large number of good books that I haven't read. Recently I haven't wanted to read any of them.
Chalk it up to mental fatigue associated with the episodic physical fatigue of my (possible, and I think likely) case of tick-borne illness or summer or toddlers or something, but opening the good books on my shelf just feels like too much work.
I have, however, wanted to read, and read, at times, rather voraciously.
For this, thankfully, we have libraries.
I make it a point of regularly picking unknown books* from the library. For most of this spring, I did such a bad job of judging books by their covers that I was tempted to admit that Amateur Reader (over at Wuthering Expectations) is correct and that I should have an organized reading plan**. I even ended up returning one of the books I picked up at the book sale because I couldn't bother to find shelf space for it.
But I just read Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming and it (along with Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon [right book at right time back in January] and Definitely Not My Darcy and Undressing Mr. Darcy by Karen Doornobos [definitely not Pride and Prejudice, but loads of fun]) has restored my belief in the unknown at the library.
How I Killed Pluto is, by far, the best science book I have read in a long time. There are a great many of you who would enjoy this book, for many of you because (and for some of you, in spite of) Mike Brown describes first-time parenthood by a scientist as I have never seen done. True, he's finding new planets, or new planetoid objects, and involved in a case of astronomical espionage, or something to that effect, and does a magnificent job of explaining how and where, and why, one looks for new things in the solar system, but the part that made me heartily chuckle was his dismay that no doctor could give him the stats concerning babies arriving or their due dates. He wanted a histogram and let everyone know. His wife quietly apologized about such rants throughout her pregnancy. I couldn't blame him. The Mister and I bemoaned this lack of graph as well.
I don't read a lot of science memoir, mostly because I haven't discovered much science memoir like this. Let me know if you read it and let me know if you have other suggestions of great stories about how people actually do great science.
*I keep wanting to use the word "random" and I'm just too much of a statistician to use it that incorrectly.
**The actual AR will probably counter that he never suggested an organized reading plan for me in particular. The AR in my head that I regularly argue with concerning issues of books, however, has often suggested it.
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3 comments:
A plan of organized reading based around pop science or science memoirs would be a good idea for someone.
Organized, I mean, up to the point I actually recommend - letting one book lead to another.
While I would like to read more such books that are this good, I'm unsure about wanting to read more science memoir generally. I suppose that is why it should be organized. Any places that you'd suggest starting?
I don't know much about the genre. I read about one science book a year. Richard Fortey's Horseshoe Crabs etc. was good. That's the one I read last year.
Follow references, comb through bibliographies, stumble across lists. I guess that is what I would do. Mix surefire classics with newer books.
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