Books!

[iesika]

Spent xmas and eve at Granny's, sleeping on an air mattress in an empty apartment across the hall from her. Baums gave me two pies, which I gave to the staff at The Arbor (Granny's assisted living place). The majority of my xmas gifts were books this year, which is a very good thing. Someone did try (and fail) to buy me a pair of shoes. They should have known better, as I can spend hours in a shoe store and not find anything that fits my bizarrely high-arched feet. I got a new bathrobe, too, which I needed, since Isis and her forerunners had put holes all in my old one. Anyway, I thought I'd share the wealth by reccing/bragging xmas gift books, some of which I've finished already (hey, it's a long trip home from Granny's). Some of these I'd asked for, some of them I think brother picked out (I know he was responsible for the Complete Hitchhiker's Guide - the title of which, btw, confused my Granny to no end).

So, I got The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, which is OMG so good. Here's a bit:

Even if it weren't raining, with subway pumps stilled, that [flooding in the tunnels] would take no more than a couple of days, they estimate. At that point, water would start sluicing away soil under the pavement. Before long, streets start to crater. With no one unclogging the sewers, some new watercourses form on the surface. Others appear suddenly as waterlogged subway ceilings collapse. Within 20 years, the water-soaked steel columns that support the street above the East Side's 4, 5, and 6 trains corrode and buckle. As Lexington Avenue caves in, it becomes a river.

Is it odd that I find this book incredibly uplifting?

Okay, number two (which I'm reading now) is The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison, by John Emsley. Very interesting read. Very dark humor sprinkled throughout. This bit is my favorite so far, and made me laugh out loud:

About one one person in ten has a level of mercury in their body that would make them unsuitable as food for any cannibals who followed the nutritional guidelines regarding excess mercury levels in meat.

Though I also really liked this:

Little Willie from his mirror
Licked the mercury right off,
Thinking in his childish error
It would cure his whooping cough.
At the funeral his mother
Brightly said to Mrs. Brown:
"Twas a chilly day for Willie
When the mercury went down.'

I also got Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach, The Omnivore's Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Micheal Pollan, and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer (which is about the dividing line between art and science).

 

Comments

[iesika.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to add:

The Elements of Murder really, really makes me want to write HP fanfiction. Really. Like, ever other page or so. How can I not when they're going on about Nicholas Flamel and Basil Valentine ("We are told that Valentine hid his manuscript inside a pillar of the church in Erfurt where the monastery was located, and there it rested until one day a bolt of lightning split open the pillar and it was revealed. In fact, there never was a Benedictine monastery at Erfurt, and no monk of this name has ever been traced" - and now in my head I see Slughorn and Snape arguing about The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony).

This should prove the level of my dorkitude.