RIP and Me

I hearby vow to join The RIP Challenge (RIP IV) and readeth the following:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2. Dracula - The graphic novel version adapted by: Michael Mucci (writer), Ben Caldwell (Penciller/ Colorist), and Bill Hilliar (inker).

Before I get started, I must finish Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I get to begin tonight. I love the Potter books and will be so very sad to be finished with them for the second time. But there is much more to read...and life is so damned short. More philosophy to come...

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

It may have been stretching it a bit to use this book for Annie's What's in a Name 2 Challenge for a "medical condition", but I did it anyway. I've read two of Oliver Sack's books and have been itching to read this one. I bought it shortly after it was published but it kept getting pushed down the to-read list.

The subtitle of this book says it all: Tales of music and the brain. Each chapter discusses a medical condition related to music. For example, there was a chapter on epilepsy and how certain people have seizures when listening to music. One of Dr. Sack's patients wore ear plugs for fear of hearing music on an elevator or in a store and having a seizure. One patient had seizures caused by Neopolitan music, but no other music. (Neopolitan music was her favorite).

One of the more dramatic tales from the book was of a cardiac surgeon who was talking on a pay phone during a thunderstorm and got a severe shock over the line. Upon recovery he became an extreme musicophile and spent every waking moment away from surgery playing the piano and composing. He had previously been a rather half-assed piano player, but had never written anything. He became so obsessed with music that he ignored his family. His wife left him for a less musicophilic man.

Another fascinating chapter was on music hallucinations. We all get songs stuck in our heads, but these people hear orchestras playing LOUD nonstop to them; it is as if they are really listening to a CD or the radio, but only they can hear it. Many of these patients can be helped somewhat with medicine, but many have to simply suck it up. The author described a time he thought he was enjoying one of his favorite pieces of music on a CD and was really rocking out. It was only after it was over that he realized he had never actually started the CD and must have "hallucinated" the entire piece.

I wish I could remember more of the strange stories at the moment, but you'll have to trust me when I say that there are plenty. It served to remind me of how tenuous our grasp on reality is and how one small blood clot or thwack on the head can change our personality dramatically...not a lovely thought. But a fascinating read.

This book is best enjoyed by those who know their music theory. Several times the author mentioned different types of scales or legato and staccato, etc. It wasn't essential that you understand these terms to get the gist, but it won't hurt.

I highly recommend this book and am anxious to read more of his books and to reread The man who mistook his wife for a hat.

Describing the Indescribable

How can I possibly "review" American Gods by Neil Gaiman? It is indescribable. It fits no known genre. It is bizarre. It is strange. It is wonderful.
It took about 150 pages before I had any clue as to what was going on. Then, very quickly, it is apparent that the book is actually about American Gods. Immigrants that have come to North America, from Native Americans, that came over the Bering land bridge 15,000 years ago, to the European immigrants that arrived in droves from the 1600s to the present day (and including so many other ethnic groups), brought their gods with them in their beliefs. These gods, largely abandoned by their believers, are alive and kicking in this book. The main character turns out to be a biological son of one of these gods.
This is a complex story. It is unlike anything I have ever read. But now that I have read this book (as well as Coraline), I can see why my cousin Jean and her son waited in line for over 3 hours to meet Neil Gaiman and get their books signed. (Jean, who is amazingly nice, got a book signed for Annie). It would be a special thing to get to exchange a few words with this author.
There were several highlights of this book. One is a sex scene that is indescribable...and weird. Gotta read it to appreciate it. The other is a murder mystery that is woven into the tapestry of the plot. The murder mystery was solved at the end of the book.
Before I give up in my feeble attempt at describing and reviewing this book, I want to thank my wife, Debi, for encouraging me to read this book. It really is an amazing and magical book. I am definitely going to read this one again. I'm sure I missed little nuances, etc. This one is destined to become a classic.

The Joy of Reading Lucy's Legacy

It was indeed a pleasure to read Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson and Kate Wong for Annie's What's in a Name Challenge and the Science Challenge. Annie may feel that I'm stretching things by using this as a book with a relative in the title, but Lucy is a relative, and I feel very certain that Donald Johanson would agree with me on this point. I thought I might get to meet Dr. Johanson this month, as Philadelphia is celebrating the year of evolution in 2008-2009, and Dr. Johanson was slated to speak in April. It was, however, April of 2008 and not 2009. Such is my luck.
This very well written and easy to read book has three parts. The first part is basically a history of the discovery of Lucy (the famous Austalopithecus afarensis skeleton found in 1974) and a travelogue of Dr. Johanson's work in Ethiopia in the intervening years. This part of the book gives us a good idea of the political problems paleontologists face when working in foreign countries, especially ones with unstable governments that are prone to being overthrown. It also gives us a good idea of what it's like being on an expedition to such a place. This is the longest section of the book, and it basically discusses what Dr. Johanson has been up to since discovering Lucy. He and his team have discovered hundreds of A. afarensis fossils so that now this is one of the best known and understood species of hominid. One of the things I like about this book is that the authors prefer the term hominid to hominin. I am so totally with them on this point.
The second section of the book is about Lucy's ancestors. The inside cover of the book has a very nice hominid family tree (phylogeny for us nerds) and the authors walk us through the earliest of the hominids. We learn about their discovery, what is known about their biology, and of course, the controversies concerning their biology. Paleoanthropologists are well known to disagree about all aspects of the biology of fossil hominids and we gain a nice insiders view of some of the debates. I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on hominids, but I learned quite a bit from this section.
The final section was about Lucy's descendants. We learn about Homo habilis, erectus, ergaster, neanderthalensis, and a bit about our own species Homo sapiens. As with the previous section, this section has a lot of information about discoveries and debates among researchers.
Overall, this is a very quick read. It is written for mostly general readers as opposed to specialists in the field of paleoanthropology. The only regret I have after reading it is that I won't be able to go back in time to 2008 and get my copy signed. I will have to keep an eye out for Dr. Johanson. He is a man that I would definitely like to meet and have a beer with. I highly recommend this book.

Once more for Once upon a Time

I am once again delighted to join Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge. This is a genre that is outside my comfort zone, so I turned to my wife for advice and guidance. She loves this Neil Gaiman guy, so I'm going to read American Gods. I did read Coraline before I took the family to see the movie and loved it. Thus, I am anxious to get on with this book. Thanks, Carl!

The Nonfic Five

My wife informed me that this Challenge is on again. If there is one thing I love, it is reading nonfiction. Last year I made a long list and ended up changing most of the books. I'm sure I'll do much the same this year. But, for whatever it's worth, here is a list of possible books that are lookin' good as of this moment:
- Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer
- Remarkable creatures by Sean Carroll
- Among Orangutans by Van Shaik
- Lost on Planet China by Troost
- Blue latitudes by Tony Horwitz
- Rebels, mavericks, and heretics by Oren Herman
- The pleasures of entomology by Howard E. Evans
- Superorganism by Bert Holldobber and E. O. Wilson
- Kluge by Gary Marcus
- The case of the female orgasm by Elisabeth Lloyd
- The bone museum by Wayne Grady
- Evolutionary ecology across three trophic levels by Abrahamson and Weis

The only problem is deciding what to read first...perhaps a good bug book to make it feel like spring, even thought it is currently snowing outside.

Herding Cats

My lovely wife, Debra, introduced me to this. It is the five books that I've read in the last 3 years that I think others MUST read. What this has to do with herding cats, however, I'm not sure. The books are:
1. The ancestor's tale by Richard Dawkins - absolutely the best book ever written
2. On the origin of species by Charlie Darwin - the most important book ever written
3. Why zebras don't get ulcers by Robert Sapolsky - a great book on why stress kills and how and why to stop worrying and be happy
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling - The best in a wonderful series
5. The lonely silver rain by John D. McDonald - the final book in another wonderful, but very different, series.

Enjoy

The Hunt for Dawn Monkey: Deep thoughts about...

I read The Hunt for Dawn Monkey by Chris Beard. I read this to learn more about the family tree, as well as for Annie's What's in a Name Challenge and the Science Challenge.
This book is an interesting mix of paleontological history, travelogue, and serious science. Throughout the book the author describes his discoveries and how they shed light on the history of primates and especially, the history of anthropoids, which are monkeys and apes. Interwoven throughout he describes the various competing hypotheses concerning the anthropoid family tree and how his discoveries have helped shed light on this topic. He has taken a somewhat historical approach by frequently discussing the historical aspects of the different hypotheses and by setting up the book as a history of his research and discoveries from his first research in the U.S. to his more current research in China. At the end of the book, he provides us with his hypothesis for the primate "family tree", or more specifically, a phylogeny of the order primates.
Like most paleoanthropologists, he is opinionated, but not annoyingly so. He feels strongly that anthropoids originated in Asia rather than Africa. He provides his reasoning for this, but since he readily admits that the oldest anthropoid by far was found in Africa, I for one was not totally convinced by his argument.
I learned a great deal and mostly enjoyed this book. As anyone who know me will attest, I am a nerd to the nth degree, but the author's in depth discussions of the minutiae of tooth morphology that separate the different primate groups and that set anthropoids apart from prosimians were more than I could bear at times. For serious paleontologists, I think this material probably would be essential. But for people with a casual desire to know a little bit more about the history of primates and little bit about how paleontology is done might be turned off by this.
I'd love to say more, but the dog needs to be let out.

Taking Wing

The third nerd book I read this year, for the Science Challenge as well as to gain wisdom, was Taking Wing by Pat Shipman. It was basically a book about the fossil bird Archaeopteryx and how this fossil explains the origin of birds and the origin of flight. It was a wonderful and very well written account of all of the research on Archaeopteryx. I read this book to gain some insight on research on various hypotheses concerning flight and I got a deeper understanding of the two major competing hypotheses a) the trees down and b) the ground up. Archaeopteryx can be used as evidence for both. Was it a climber that glided down from trees or a "flapper" that could take off from the ground? The evidence is certainly ambiguous. Archaeopteryx had well developed wings and feathers, but most fossils show it lacked a well developed sternum for attachment of flight muscles. It also lacked the ability to do a "wing flip" that allows a bird to not stall as it raises its wings for another "stroke". But it's small hallux suggests that it couldn't perch in a tree like a regular bird either. There didn't seem to be trees in the immediate area where the fossils were found either. And it lacked muscles to perch effectively. But, to make a long story short, we still don't know what it could and couldn't do. It perhaps could've taken off from the ground, which is what I tend to think it did.
I can highly recommend this book. It was a very quick read and gave much insight. My only complaint is that it is a bit out of date, as it was published in 1998 and mentions quite a bit of Larry Martin and others who dispute that birds are related to dinosaurs (even though 2 of the 7 Archaeopteryx fossils were mistakenly identified as the dinosaur Compsognathus). But now that 17 species of unequivocally feathered dinosaurs have been discovered, the vast majority of paleontologists and the general public for that matter, agree that dinos are the ancestors of birds...and as my son Max says, birds are dinosaurs. The fact that Larry Martin STILL disputes the dino-bird relationship is astounding. But, I do have my own faults, and so I won't throw stones. Alan Feduccia is quoted in the book as saying " There is no evidence that dinosaurs possessed feathers. Feathers are a uniquely bird characteristic". Well, not so any more.
I enjoyed this book even more than Heilmann's Origin of Birds. Now I can't wait to read "Glorified Dinosaurs" by Louis Chappe. So many books, so little time!

Happy Birthday Darwin

I've been meaning to blog for weeks now about Darwin's 200th birthday, which was February 12. There have been various cool things going on all over the world to celebrate. I watched David Attenborough's new video "Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life" on youtube yesterday. It was fantastic. I had a celebration in my Evolution class and gave a guest "lecture" on Darwin for another class.
I tried to attend several important lectures. Philadelphia is sponsoring the Year of Evolution and Donald Johansen, the paleonanthropologist who discovered Lucy, was due to speak in April. I, however, assumed that it was April 2009, but it was April 2008, so I missed that. I was hoping to take Annie to see Donald Prothero speak at Cornell one Sunday afternoon only to discover that he was speaking on Saturday when I couldn't attend. So it goes...
The major way that I did celebrate was to read Darwin: The life of a tormented evolutionist by Desmond and Moore. I did this for myself, to make myself a better citizen, and also for Annie's What's in a Name Challenge. I began this book on Janurary 1,but left it behind when I left for the Bahamas on 1/5/09, as it weighs upwards of 15 pounds and would have made the aircraft unable to gain sufficient altitude to get us to the Bahamas. Whilst in the Bahamas I read another book and began Quammen's short biography "The reluctant Mr. Darwin". I got halfway through Quammen's book on the flight home and then jumped right back into Desmond and Moore. It was a wonderful book. It made Darwin come to life with just the exact amount of nauseating detail about him and his life without being the slightest bit boring. It was approximately 700 pages in hardback, so it was not a short read (or a light read, as I alluded to earlier). But this book did exactly what I hoped it would. It gave me a much better understanding of who Darwin was and how the events of his life shaped his most wonderful theory. Quammen's book was simply too short and too lacking in specifics and details. But this book was perfect. Exciting tidbits I learned:
- Darwin was known as "Gas" to his childhood friends because of his love of chemistry
- Darwin was much closer to his Dad than many texts and stories mention
- Darwin had excessive flatulence, perhaps related to Chagas disease that he picked up in South America
- Darwin loved for his wife, Emma, to take care of him and "mother" him through his various and many illnesses, which were also probably related to Chagas disease.
If you want to know more about Charles Darwin, read this book. And get your own copy, because I'm keeping mine.

A new year...a new decades challenge

Happy new year to my reader(s): Just popping in to make a list for the new decades challenge. Last year, I went from the 1830s and worked my way toward modern times. This year, we begin in the 1990s and work back. Here goes:
1990s - Darwin: the life of a tormented evolutionist
1980s - Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut or Pleasures of entomology by Howard Evans
1970s - On Human Nature by E. O. Wilson
1960s - Cat's cradle by Vonnegut or Life of Insects by Wigglesworth
1950s - Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
1940s - The natural history of mosquitoes by Maston Bates
1930s - Biology of the amphibia by Noble
1920s - The biography of spiders by Savory
1910s - The life of the caterpillar by Fabre
1900s - Insect life by Comstock

After looking at the list, I do detect an insectish theme here. We may play with this list over the coming months, but tomorrow I begin to read...and read...and read.

Finishing up the Decades Challenge

Well, I finally made it. I finished the Decades challenge almost a year after it began. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Read a bunch of stuff I wouldn't have otherwise read. Here's what was read:
1830s - Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
1840s - Vestiges by Robert Chambers
1850s - The origin of species by Charles Darwin
1860s - Man's place in nature by Thomas Huxley
1870s - Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
1880s - The formation of vegetable mould by Charles Darwin
1890s - The island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
1900s - The natural history of aquatic insects by H. Miall
1910s - The lost world by A. C. Doyle
1920s - The origin of birds by Heilmann
1930s - Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernie Hemingway.

I'm definitely going to do this challenge again in 2009, but I won't go so deeply into the past. I really wanted to read the old evolution masterpieces. In the coming year, I may begin in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s and work my way back. Thanks for doing this challenge, Michelle, and I can't wait to get back to it in January!

The lost world

I was happy to read The lost world by Arthur Conan Doyle for the Decades challenge (1910s). I haven't read any A.C. Doyle since I read some Sherlock Holmes as a kid. In short, I really loved this book. It was full of interesting characters and adventure. I wish I read it as a kid. I would've loved this book when I was 10.

As a biologist, I do have some issues with the science, but I don't want to be a spoil sport. This is a fast reading, well written (and easy to read for an almost 100 year old book), adventure story. I can't wait until I can read it again. It usually only takes me about 18 months to completely forget a book so I can read it again. Middle age and stupidity do have their up sides.

Hemingway: Stories where nothing happens Part II

In college a friend of mine suggested that I read The Sun also rises. I was amazed at how it was an entire book where absolutely nothing happened. I kept waiting for SOMETHING, but that something just never came.

Well, I gave Ernie another try with pretty much the same results. For Annie's What's in a Name Challenge as well as the Decades Challenge (1930s), I read Snows of Kilimanjaro. It was a series of short stories where basically nothing happens. Nada. After a whole series of such stories, imagine my surprise when I got to the last story where something actually happened. The last story is a humdinger and I recommend it. The rest of the book I would only recommend for people whose lives are way too and they need a book to calm them down. For such people who couldn't take any excitement at all, this is a good read.

My Ph.D. adviser did tell me not to tear down a barn unless I could rebuild it better. I definitely can't write better. His prose is actually very nice, but story-wise I really would have liked some plot. My advice is to skip to the last story, "The short happy life of Francis Macomber.

What's in a Name II

I am delighted to sign up for my daughter's new reading challenge, What's in a Name II. Here are some possibilities:

1. Profession: Darwin: the life of a tormented evolutionist by Desmond and Moore, Time traveler by Novacek

2. Time of Day: The search for Dawn Monkey by Beard, Night Prey by Sanford, Dawn of the Dinosaurs by Prothero.

3. Relative: Beyond Band of Brothers by Winters, Wifey by Judy Blume (no giggles, please, New Guinea tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers by Desowitz

4. Body Part: Bones of contention by Chambers, Taking wing by Shipman, Fins into limbs by Hall.

5. Building: Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut, The Haunting of Hill House by Jackson

6. Medical Condition: Musicophilia by Sacks, Death Trap by McDonald, Fates worse than death by Vonnegut

Thanks for the Challenge, Annie!

Miocene Apes: Here's what I think

I read The ape in the tree: an intellectual and natural history of Proconsul by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman, the husband and wife team from Penn State, which is my wife's alma mater and where my academic career got off to a very inauspicious beginning in 1984, but it wasn't all a bust because I met my wife who is my favorite person as well as my best friend. But, this isn't the time or the place to walk down memory lane. This was an interesting book. I read this for the What an Animal Challenge. The first part was a travelogue and discussion of the logistics of major paleological expeditions. This part of the book was interesting, but I was really itching to learn more about them miocene apes, which was the subject of the second half of the book. This part was enlightening and somewhat frustrating. I learned a bit about Proconsul and a few other early apes, but I was left really longing for more. I wanted more in depth natural history of all of the miocene apes, but I feel like I didn't get it in this book. I did enjoy the style and writing of the book. It was a nice fast read, but now I've got to dig deeper into the literature to learn more about my early ancestors.

Not Fantasy Island

Once again, my wonderful wife, Debi, recommended a winning book. She knew I would like The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells and indeed I did. I read this one for The Decades Challenge (1890s) as well as for R.I.P. Challenge.

A man is lost at sea in a lifeboat and "lucky" for him he is picked up by a ship. He can't help but notice that one of the men on the ship is strange. He has a beastly snout and ears. But, once they arrive at the Island, he soon realizes that there are many beast-men roaming free on the Island. And to compound the tension, there are horrible screams coming from Dr. Moreau's lab at all hours of night and day. Well, it turns out that Moreau has the lab skills necessary to turn animals into men-like creatures. The men-like creatures are not supposed to eat meat, but some of the island's rabbits have been turning up half eaten. The tension builds and before long, the man finds himself alone with the beast-men, who are becoming more beastly by the day. If Something Wicked This Way Comes was creepy, this book was really creepy. But excellent.

As if this story wasn't fascinating enough, the author's writing was absolutely captivating. The writing was amazingly elegant. This book is over 100 years old, and older books can sometimes be a real bummer to read sometimes (e.g., Dickens' Great Expectations...I anxiously await the wrath of the Dickens crowd). Not this book, however. I can't wait to read more Wells, especially War of the Worlds. This was an extremely interesting story that was written in amazingly engaging and elegant prose.

Something wicked

I had a tough time picking books for the RIP Challenge, but my lovely wife, Debi, recommended Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I've never read any Bradbury before, so I gave this one a shot. It does have a very catchy title, I thought. And it is a very interesting and creepy book. A carnival rolls into town in the wee hours of the morning and two teenage boys have to check it out. They see some very strange things involving, among other things, the time space continuum and a shrunken salesman, and get the carnies angry. These are carnies you don't want to be angry with you. They engage the boys in a cat and mouse game for a while. Ultimately, the Rooseveltian concept that there is nothing to fear but fear itself wins the day and puts the carnies in their place. Ray Bradbury has a very distinctive style of writing that definitely helps keep up the creepy tone of the book. I'm very glad I read this one, especially at this time of year.

Thoughts on Stalking the Plumed Serpent

This is another one I read for the What an Animal Challenge. I didn't PLAN to read this one for this challenge, but I found out about this book, which is new, and I couldn't resist furthering my snake theme that I have going. This book is a series of "adventures in herpetology" that are mainly about snakes by D. Bruce Means, who is a herpetologist at Florida State. He travels around the world in pursuit of interesting species of snakes. His stated goal in this book is to make more people appreciate snakes and other "creepy crawlies". Like many herpetologists, he things warm and fuzzy mammals get most of the conservation efforts, and, of course, he is correct. I think that he will mostly be preaching to the choir, as this book will probably be read by people like me who already love creepy crawlies, snakes, sharks, worms, bugs, and other things that make many people scream. But if he succeeds and converts a few people, then it will be well worth the effort. I enjoyed this book, which could've used a few more pictures of the creatures he was "hunting". It did have 10 pages or so of pictures, but it is hard to get an idea of the beauty of a rare snake without seeing it. Sometimes a picture is worth 1000 words as they say. One part of this book stood out to me. The author hiked a several hundred mile "trail" that John Muir hiked in the early 1800s. It was now nothing but highways and strip malls and the author was almost run over several times. It does speak volumes about the progress of mankind and how we treat our world. We are paving and building all animals into oblivion. And we are animals, too.

Natural History of Aquatic Insects

I read Natural History of Aquatic Insects by Professor L. C. Miall for the Decades Challenge (1900s) and for the What an Animal Challenge. You know this book is old when the author refers to himself as "Professor". I'll have to do that when I write my first book. This book was written in 1903. It contains the level of nauseating descriptive detail only found in nature books from this era. It goes through various groups of aquatic insects and lists all of the information known about each. Usually one or two well known species are highlighted. But the level of detail is intense and you can and will learn quite a bit about this group of creatures from this book. All told, there really are not many books about the ecology of aquatic bugs. Even though it's 105 years out of date, this is a very educational book. I learned a lot. I did, in fact, forget much of what I learned because I read it months ago and am just now doing the review. But whenever I need to know how a midge larvae breathes or what a whirligig beetle eats, I know which book to use.