Books

While I was gone for 6 days in Florida, my mailbox got choked with books. Some came from publishers, others from friends who hit my amazon.com wish list. Disregard the last ClockQuotes just below – I am excited about these books and intend to read them.
First, and most exciting is Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life by my SciBling Carl Zimmer. Not surprisingly, the book has received glowing reviews everywhere. That will be the first one I tackle next week as soon as I am done with what I am reading right now.
Then, I got The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. Now that the weather is nice, and considering that North Carolina is great for birding, I will see how good and useful it is for my kids (especially my daughter seems keen) as well as for myself as my birding skills hover right around zero. The book has lovely illustrations by Julie Zickefoose.
Next, there is the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments which, I bet, my son will like to use. I grew up with such a book (in Serbo-Croatian language), but this one is specifically written for this day and age in the USA when the chemistry sets are de-fanged and boring due to litigation fears. The book promises to make chemistry exciting to a kid again.
Then, there is The Wisdom of Whores by another blog-friend Elizabeth Pisani. And The Animal Research War which is likely to make me happy. And Sex in Space, which, despite this review is so skinny it will take only about an hour of my time so it will likely get read anyway.
And I have read two and am finishing the third book on various airplane trips recently – I’ll try to find some time and energy to write brief reviews of them here as well.