{"id":20341,"date":"2014-09-13T21:17:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T02:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=20341"},"modified":"2018-11-28T18:34:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T00:34:22","slug":"that-facebook-book-meme-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/13\/that-facebook-book-meme-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"That Facebook Book Meme Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Iain Davidson<\/a> tagged me with the facebook novel meme. Here are the rules: Oh, hell, never mind the rules. I wanted to provide links to the books so I decided to do this as a blog post which I’ll paste on my facebook page (and of course tag some unlucky facebook friend).<\/p>\n

Here it is. I broke some rules. So what?<\/p>\n

Moment in the Sun: Report on the Deteriorating Quality of the American Environment<\/a> by Dr. Robert Reinow<\/a> was my Rachel Carson\u2019s Silent Spring<\/a>. As a child I watched Reinow\u2019s Sunrise Semester course on TV a couple of times. He would give a lecture on some manner or other by which humans were ruining the environment. Then he and his wife would put on a skit demonstrating it satirically. I especially remember the Reinow family sitting around to eat a nice dinner, and Mrs. Reinow sneaking over to the stove, opening the top of the pot in which the stew cooked, and dumping in copious quantities of DDT. \u201cThis is what we are doing to ourselves!\u201d One day I started a project. I had just started driving and I wanted to visit every public road between Rout 9W and the Hudson River from Albany south at least a couple of counties distance. Early on during that project I came across Holly Hock Hollow Road. It sounded familiar. I drove up the road, and along it were various signs made to look like they were written by elves or gnomes, about this and that aspect of nature or the environment. Finally I came to an unoccupied (at the moment, but lived in) cottage and small complex of outbuildings. I had come to the Reinow estate. I went back a couple of times later but never managed to run into them. The book, which is the point of this paragraph, was prescient. It predicted pretty much everything that happened over the 20 years or so after it was written, from acid rain to DDT. The book made me an angry supporter of the environment, like Reinow was. <\/p>\n

I had messed around with the Sherlock Holmes<\/a> Canon here and there for a long time then one day decided to read them all cover to cover. Then I did it again. Twice. I don\u2019t know why, I just like it. <\/p>\n

Karl Hiassen wrote Tourist Season<\/a> and then he wrote a bunch of other books, fiction, not children\u2019s fiction, with a guy named Skink in them. I use those attributes to define the \u201cSkink Canon\u201d though in truth Skink himself is a relatively minor character in some of the books, and is never the main character. But he is in all of the books. The protagonist and antagonist in his novels shift though they are often similar to each other while Skink stays in place. In the swamps. Where he lives. I guess I like the Skink canon because if I lived in Florida I\u2019d probably be Skink by now. <\/p>\n

Everybody seems to either love or hate Anne Rice, and when they do, it is all about the vampires. The vampires are nice, and I would certainly included those stories on a longer list of books, but less appreciated but in my view better is the series related to the Mayfare Witches: The Witching Hour<\/a>, Lasher<\/a>, and Taltos<\/a>. Creepy weird good stories. Take notes, you\u2019ll need them. Maybe a nice genealogy program will help. <\/p>\n

Rita Mae Brown wrote a number of novels exploring both related and unrelated themes in the same setting (though sometimes varying the century). This includes a long series co-authored with her cat. Rubyfruit Jungle is her famous, break-through, prize winning work. Amid this larger set of works is a trilogy, if memory serves correctly but I may be missing a piece (and they were written out of order but I\u2019m giving you the historical order of the story here) that I take to represent her larger work. They are: Six of One<\/a>, Loose Lips<\/a>, and Bingo<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Marge Piercy\u2019s Gone to Soldiers<\/a> is an historical novel set during World War II following several different individuals of varying degrees (including zero) of connection to each other. <\/p>\n

I read Lord of the Rings<\/a> when I was too young to totally get it but I enjoyed it. (It was about the second or third \u201cadult\u201d thing I read). Then I read it again when I was older and then one more time. Then, when I as in the Congo with a really bad case of Malaria I read a good part of it again and the story entered my delusional state, which was … interesting. I survived both. I\u2019ll include Hobbit<\/a> in with the trilogy because it fits. <\/p>\n

About the same time I was reading Lord of the Rings, I read The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science<\/a> (in my case, two paper back volumes, one on physical science, the other biology). It is how I got introduced to science, sort of (I was actually introduced earlier but this was my first systematic learning of science, insofar as reading a book serves in this way). The science I was reading was a bit out of date but to a kid one digit in age that hardly mattered. Black holes were a conjecture, the big bang as I recall somewhat more accepted. Many particles had not been \u201cfound\u201d but that search was very much underway. The biology section sticks with me less probably because I\u2019ve gone ahead and unlearned all of the 1960s biology, since I\u2019m kind of a biologist. <\/p>\n

When people ask me what novel to read, I often say \u201cHey, did you read The Egyptian<\/a> by Mika Waltari yet? No? Read it!<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t gotten around to Mastering Regular Expressions<\/a> yet than you are missing out.<\/p>\n

I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich<\/a> in the seventh grade, and it was quite life changing. <\/p>\n

I read Deschooling Society (70 Edition)<\/a> in the ninth grade. It was quite revealing.<\/p>\n

I dropped out of school in the 10th grade. But that\u2019s another story and there is no book.<\/p>\n

One day my sister said, \u201cYou\u2019re kind of a freak, here, read this,\u201d and handed me Welcome to the Monkey House<\/a>. It was my first adult fiction. I didn\u2019t find it freaky. That must prove I was a freak. Soon after I read Fahrenheit 451<\/a>, then everything by Bradbury and Vonnegut (available at the time) along with, as mentioned Lord of the Rings. So that is how I got my start on literature. <\/p>\n

A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World: The Voyage of the Beagle<\/a> is the most revealing of Darwin, within a reasonable volume of words. I don\u2019t know if it changed me but it has stuck with me and I refer to it often.<\/p>\n

Although A Perfect Spy<\/a> might be a perfect Le Carr\u00e9 book, I wouldn\u2019t wish it on anyone who hadn\u2019t already read the Smiley canon. And, really George Smiley is where it is at: Call for the Dead<\/a>, A Murder of Quality<\/a>,The Spy Who Came in from the Cold<\/a>, The Looking Glass War<\/a>, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy<\/a>, Honorable Schoolboy<\/a>, Smiley’s People<\/a>, and so on (there are about three others). <\/p>\n

Sungudogo<\/a>, the story of a pair of adventurers traveling across the Congo in search of an elusive primate that may or may not exist, reminds me of a lot of things I\u2019ve done myself. Brilliant novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Iain Davidson tagged me with the facebook novel meme. Here are the rules: Oh, hell, never mind the rules. I wanted to provide links to the books so I decided to do this as a blog post which I’ll paste on my facebook page (and of course tag some unlucky facebook friend). Here … Continue reading That Facebook Book Meme Thing<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3446,40,5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/books4.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-5i5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31032,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20341\/revisions\/31032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}