{"id":3426,"date":"2023-07-31T18:31:57","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T22:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=3426"},"modified":"2023-09-23T20:03:33","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T00:03:33","slug":"july-2023-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2023\/07\/july-2023-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"July 2023 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>The Dispossessed<\/em> &#8211; Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974. Another <a href=\"https:\/\/calmgrove.wordpress.com\/2023\/06\/30\/hain6\/#comment-63088\">re-read<\/a> (since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2022\/04\/april-2022-books-read\/\">April 2022<\/a>), this time for Calmgrove&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/calmgrove.wordpress.com\/tag\/lovehain\/\">#LoveHain<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Midnight&#8217;s Children<\/em> &#8211; Salman Rushdie, 1981. Quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Colony<\/em> &#8211; Audrey Magee, 2022. For Second Monday &#8211; good discussion, but I didn&#8217;t love it and didn&#8217;t flag a single passage.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>In Spite of All Terror<\/em> &#8211; Hester Burton, 1968. A comfort re-read of an old favorite that holds up very well. Burton was prolific &#8211; <em>Castors Away<\/em>! is probably the most well-known of her books &#8211; but this is the only one I&#8217;ve read. I should try more!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Permaculture Promise: What Permaculture Is and How It Can Help Us Reverse Climate Change, Build a More Resilient Future on Earth, and Revitalize Our Communities<\/em> &#8211; Jono Neiger, 2016. Read for the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a>\u00a0July challenge, &#8220;A book borrowed from your local library.&#8221; It was also the <a href=\"https:\/\/salticid.com\/mailman\/listinfo\/forbes_nature_environment_salticid.com\">Nature &amp; Environment<\/a> selection for the month, so there are quotes TBD, but here&#8217;s my one sentence review for now: &#8220;With brief text and lots of color illustrations, this book gives a high-level overview of dozens of ways the principles of permaculture design can help address climate change, strengthen communities, and build resilience into systems from water to energy to finance.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Drop Dead Healthy: One Man&#8217;s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection <\/em>&#8211; A. J. Jacobs, 2012. Very entertaining, like all of Jacobs&#8217; self-experimentation books, and I learned a few things. His wife, Julie, sounds awesome.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy&#8217;s Progress<\/em> &#8211; Charles Dickens, 1838. Quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>On Looking: A Walker&#8217;s Guide to the Art of Observation<\/em> &#8211; Alexandra Horowitz, 2013. I&#8217;ve been meaning to read Horowitz&#8217;s book on smelling, specifically (she is a dog researcher), but didn&#8217;t realize she&#8217;d written this &#8211; I loved it! It&#8217;s a wonderful exploration of noticing all kinds of input, through the senses but also learning how to understand what&#8217;s going on. The intro is a description of a brief walk in New York City, and each chapter revisits aspects of that walk alongside an expert in a relevant field (e.g. sound design, typography, geology). I gasped out loud and grinned like a maniac when a chapter on insect signs introduced my acquaintance \/ local hero <a href=\"http:\/\/charleyeiseman.com\/\">Charley Eiseman<\/a>. Plus she&#8217;s describing where I grew up, so my enjoyment was overdetermined.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>A Closed and Common Orbit<\/em> &#8211; Becky Chambers, 2016. This, #2 in the <em>Wayfarers<\/em> series that I discovered in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2023\/05\/may-2023-books-read\/\">May<\/a>, stands on its own, barely overlapping with the characters of <em>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet<\/em>, but it&#8217;s equally delightful. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Eye of the Heron<\/em> &#8211; Ursula K. Le Guin, 1978. <a href=\"https:\/\/calmgrove.wordpress.com\/2023\/07\/27\/lovehain-the-eye-of-the-heron\/#comment-63334\">Re-read<\/a> for Calmgrove&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/calmgrove.wordpress.com\/tag\/lovehain\/\">#LoveHain<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Footfall<\/em> &#8211; Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1985. An old favorite I picked up again because of seeing <em>Oppenheimer <\/em>&#8211; there&#8217;s an equivalent to the Manhattan Project I wanted to revisit. I finally assembled a list of the roman-a-clef science fiction writers who appear here (what wish-fulfillment: SF authors are brought in by NASA to help deal with an alien race, and they are the key to victory!), thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/groups.google.com\/g\/alt.books.larry-niven\/c\/nbJZu5bENAg\">this discussion:<\/a>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Robert &amp; Virginia Anson: the Heinleins (this one I knew)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Wade Curtis &amp; Nat Reynolds: Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (this one I guessed)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sherry Atkinson: presumably C. J. Cherryh<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Joe Ransom (&#8220;he had a gaudy mustache&#8221;): probably Joe Haldeman based on commenter dlc1119 saying &#8220;you &#8216;Hold a Man&#8217; for Ransom&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bob Burnam: either Greg Benford or Robert Forward<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3562,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions\/3562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}