The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year – Margaret Renkl, 2023. Nature Enviro selection; quotes TBD.
Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? – Lizzi Damilola Blackburn, 2022. Second Monday selection. I didn’t pull quotes exactly, but I did mark Nigerian foods to look up, so I’ll probably do a post.
Older, Faster, Stronger: What Women Runners Can Teach Us All About Living Younger Longer – Margaret Webb, 2014. I’m running the NY Marathon again this fall and checking out more running books. This one was music to my ears since I am old and have always been slow. I enjoyed Webb’s adventures and interviews, and it was a bit inspiring, but I didn’t learn anything much new.
Exhalation: Stories – Ted Chiang, 2019. Massachusetts Center for the Book April challenge, “A short story or essay collection.” I wrote: “Nine great, thought-provoking stories, all loosely science fiction but very different in style, subject, and length. Chiang is a master of the form.” I loved most of these, but the one that sticks with me the most is “The Great Silence,” which was originally written for a video installation. It’s just as strong on its own.
I Hate Running and You Can Too: How to Get Started, Keep Going, and Make Sense of an Irrational Passion – Brendan Leonard, 2021. Another browse selection from the Forbes running shelves. Eh, I like the idea of his graphics, but it’s better on Instagram, and even on Instagram I enjoy this kind of thing more.
My Dog’s The World’s Best Dog – Suzy Becker, 1995. Dollar book from Raven, a cute 10-minute read and I love the sentiment, but nothing special. Back out it goes!
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James, 1881. Great Books selection, quotes TBD. I know I read it once before but didn’t remember a thing. Fantastic, even though in general I don’t love James.
The Mote in God’s Eye – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1974. Re-read again, for similar reasons to why I turned to it in 2022, but this time not just climate change…
The Twenty-One Balloons – William Pène du Bois, 1947. Children’s splinter group selection; quotes pulled, TBD.
Short story
“The First Full Thought of Her Life” – Deb Olin Unferth (published in her collection Wait Till you See Me Dance, 2017). A great Story Club selection that sparked an equally wonderful discussion in the comments.
Article
“Scientific Method,” Peter Caws, entry in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Paul Edwards, 1967) – one of my dad’s papers I’ve been digitizing and uploading.
“‘Scientific method,’ if it has any univocal meaning, means the right mixture of observation and experiment on the one side, and theory construction on the other. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the proportions should be equal. … this should give pause to contemporary practitioners of sciences in which the data are piling up without any sign of fundamental theoretical clarification.”
“[Bacon said] the true scientist is like the bee, which goes to nature for its raw material but works it into a new product, rather than like the empiricist ant, which merely collects, or the rationalist spider, which merely spins out its own substance—but in his own work antlike qualities predominated.”