Science and Natural History discussion

Hi,

I thought list members would be interested in these 6 summer nature reads from Matt at Cool Green Science: http://blog.nature.org/science/2016/0...

I'll add my book as a 7th:


Happy Reading!
Lea

I've read some great nature reads lately. Years ago, I read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson & I reread it just a few years ago. Excellent, even today. I recently found The Sense of Wonder as an audio book at my library. It was good, too. Richard Jefferies wrote Wild Life in a Southern County back around 1880, I think. I found it at the same time narrated by Simon Vance.

Sue Hubbell channels Carson in Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs. It was good, if a bit dated in some respects as I point out in my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Best American Science and Nature Writing is an interesting series. This one is 2015, but there's one every year. I wound up giving it 4 stars overall, but not all the stories were on par. I reviewed each one here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have another one (2011?) that I've been meaning to get to since it's edited by Mary Roach. I'm a fan & have read all of her books.

More technical nature books also interest me. Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry by Christie Wilcox was fantastic. I'm no scientist, but I still got a lot out of this one. I gave it a 5 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Luckily, I'd listened to Unseen Diversity: The World of Bacteria, a lecture by Betsey Dexter Dyer. I learned a lot from it & reviewed it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I had high hopes for Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, but they didn't pan out. She seemed unbelievably ignorant & out of touch with reality which seems impossible in someone as bright as she must be. I abandoned the book & gave it a 1 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

One of the best books I've ever read is Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog. Some might not think it really belongs here, but how we think about an animal has a lot to do with how we study or relate to it. This book was so good that I listened to it & then bought the hardback & skimmed through it as well. I gave them both 5 star reviews here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Best American S&N Writing is indeed an interesting series, but the essays/selections (like you pointed out) are variable in quality.

They are, but that's OK. I found plenty to make the last one worth reading. In going through my tottering & messy TBR pile, I found I have 2 more S&N volumes: 2009 & 2011. I now recall I found one at Goodwill the other day & got it for $1.

While I have a lot of chores I should be doing, I went about looking for bugs & mushrooms for a couple of hours this weekend. Out by the big barn, I found one of the latter & spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what it was. The descriptive vocabulary is unfamiliar to me, there are a lot of similar species, & the basic conformation points can vary a lot between individuals. None of the apps on my phone got me close nor did my Audubon guide. I finally figured it out through a lot of googling.