Written by Kotb (coat-bee), this hardback color book for young children is beautifully lyrical and rhythmical. When I say it could put you to sleep I mean that in the nicest way possible. Mason's illustrations are simple, but well-done and nicely-colored. The text is reaffirming and persuasive, and the whole effect is quite warming and enjoyable, especially for young children. Hoda Kotb is a main co-anchor for NBC's morning 'Today' show and her story, written to celebrate her adoption of a child, takes us through several scenarios of lasting and powerful love for one's children. I commend it as a worthy and inspiring read.
Showing posts with label print book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label print book. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2020
The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton
I loved this author's Dinosnores book, and I adore her last name which is so irrepressibly perky, so I wasn't surprised that I enjoyed this nicely-illustrated hardback for young children either. And who can possibly have a beef with a book that teaches these children how to go to bed and more importantly, how to go to sleep? A group of animals on a boat go through their bedtime routine and while I'm not sure about exercising after a bath as opposed to before it, in general the routine is pretty good one, involving getting good and clean, getting some exercise, brushing teeth and getting into pajamas. The book is rhyming, and fun, and colorful so what's not to like? It did not put me to sleep while I read it, which is paradoxically why I liked it!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Snowy Hide and Seek by Eric Carle
The phenomenally successful Hungry Caterpillar is back in this winter adventure. How this works exactly given that the caterpillar became a butterfly half a century ago is a bit of a mystery, but I'm not going to rate this book negatively just because of that! LOL! Described as a 'A Finger Trail Lift-the-Flap Book' this colorful hardback tells a story of searching and finding, and encourages the young reader to open flaps and follow finger trials, so it's a very tactile work, perfect for curious youngsters. The caterpillar gets to meet penguins and polar bears, reindeer and Santa Claus, and generally has a fun time as will, I'm sure, your toddler. I commend this one as a worthy read.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
I've enjoyed this author's books for children (3 out of 3 prior to the present one) and this one upheld that tradition. Frankly I can't believe I haven't reviewed this one before now. It's not a Christmas book, and the reason I do it now is because the author has a Christmas book out which I shall also review up next. This one is a counting book - a colorful pasteboard for young children that documents this voracious caterpillar's chomping through one of this, two of that, three of the other, and so on, not ad infinitum fortuantely. I'm not convinced that caterpillars really eat some of the things this one did, but it was very hungry!
I commend this as a worthy read with a joyous ending for young children. Count on it!
Little Blue Truck's Christmas by Alice Shertle, Jill McElmurry
Written by Shertle, illustrated by McElmurry, this is another colorful hardback for young children, about the little blue pickup truck who must deliver five Christmas trees, although it seems less like a delivery as such than it does the truck hustling these trees to whomever it could find to buy them! But it finds a buyer for each and every tree, especially the last one which looked like maybe it wouldn't have a home for the holidays! A fun Christmassy sort of a story, which I commend.
How to Catch a Reindeer by Alice Walstead, Andy Elkerton, Adam Wallace
So, it's the most reviewing time of the year - for some more children's books for Christmas, that is! This hardcover picture book for kids was beautifully colored, well-illustrated, and amusingly-written in rhyme. I've never bought into the 'A Visit From Saint Nicholas' reindeer-naming scheme, but this book does. It's about a reindeer trying to catch-up to Santa's sleigh, and about people who for reasons I was unclear about, are trying to catch the reindeer. They don't succeed, but the reindeer does, as we know she would all along.
Some people might take issue with a female reindeer with antlers, but believe it or not, female reindeer - aka caribou - do grow antlers. They're the only species of deer where females do. Why? You'll have to ask them. So reindeer are a good emblem for equality of the sexes! At least in that regard. They shed their antlers, which are bone, not horn, after the males do, so if you see an antlered reindeer in the spring, it's a female, not a male. Very confusing, huh?
But I digress. I commend this book as an amusing and colorful read.
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Fallen Women by Sandra Dallas
This was another old pritn book from my shelves that I'm slowly going through and reading whatever catches my eye that I haven't read already. Set in 1885, the year that Grover Cleveland was sworn in as the 22nd President of the USA, the Cree massacre of settlers at Frog Lake too place, Gottlieb Daimler was granted a patent for the first motorcycle, 'Jumbo' the elephant died in the PT Barnum Circus train wreck, and Dr Pepper was served for the first time!
Louis Pasteur also successfully tested his rabies vaccine and it's a pity it could not have been used on this novel in which protagonist Beret Osmundsen travels to Denver, Colorado, where her younger sister has been murdered. Lillie worked in a house of ill-repute, and Beret is determined to see justice done, despite her disapproval of her sister's life. The book description has it that Beret's "investigation takes her from the dangerous, seedy underworld of Denver’s tenderloin to the highest levels of Denver society. Along the way Beret learns the depths of Lillie’s depravity and must reconcile these with her memories of the innocent young girl of their youth."
I don't knwo where my thought processes were at when I picked this up. I should have set it right back down having read that much, but it seemed at the time - I'm guessing! - to be a potentially interesting period novel. It was not. I made it through six tedious chapters and grew rapidly tired of the constant flashbacks. I want to follow events now! I don't honestly give a damn about the main characters' pasts. Now is what I'm interested in, even if 'now' is over a century ago. It's why I bought the book. If I'd wante done set in 1875 or whenever, I'd have bought that one instead!
The problem is that even had there been no flashbacks, I would still have ditched this, because neither of the two main characters was remotely appealing to me. Worse, I quickly grew to dislike them both: Beret and the lout of a police detective who she was working with. Given the way that character was drawn, I saw no reason why he would agree to let her be involved in the investigation, and she had nothing that appealed to me in terms of being an interesting person or a memorable character. Like I said, I DNF'd it and did not regret it because I was able to move on to a much more interesting book! I can't commend this. Instead, I condemn it.
Vital Dust by Christian de Duve
This is one of my favorite books and covers a topic that doesn't get as much attention as evolution. It covers the origin of life - I mean it had to come from somewhere before it could evolve, right? LOL! De Duve died almost a decade ago, but he has left us a treasure here which covers every aspect of life from non-life, with the available evidence (as of his writing this book in 1995).
The book is extensive - some three hundred pages plus an extensive bibliography, glossary and other supportive material, such as additional reading suggestions. It's divided into several broad parts, starting with one on chemistry, and following that with how the genome came to be, moving on to how cells formed, the first 'real cell' as we know them today, multicellular life, and the development of intelligence.
Each part is subdivided into sections going into more detail on various aspects on the main topic. For example, The Age of Chemistry is split into sections on the search for origins, the first catalysts of life, fuel for emerging life, and the advent of RNA.
I whole-heartedly commend this as a worthy read.
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
This is a really superb book about a prediction made by the theory of evolution which was followed up by the author and resulted in the momentous discovery of Tiktaalik. ("We were the Tiktaaliks. We were exterminated" - a little bit of Doctor Who humor there...). There was a gap in the flow of evolution from what one fossil (Panderichthys) represented as a fish, and what the next fossil in line (Acanthostega) represented in terms of fish coming out onto land over time. Panderichthys was some 380 million years old. Acanthostega was around 365 million years old.
You see that fifteen million year gap? That's the kind of thing that creationists like to point to when they make their baseless claim that evolution is "just a theory". Since they can present no scientific evidence supporting their position, creationists are necessarily reduced to pointing out what they blindly believe are gaps or errors in the scientific theory of evolution.
The author, Neil Shubin, and his colleagues decided that if there was a evolutonary link between Panderichthys) and Acanthostega - while not necessarily a direct one between the two, but if there existed any such thing - It would be found in rocks datable between those two fossils. Such rocks were to be found on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, so Shubin and co went there and dig - and lo and behold, they found the transitonal form exactly where prediction said it would be, and evolution was vindicated once again.
This book covers more than just Tiktaalik though. It goes on to discuss several curiosities we humans have which cannot be explained if we were specially created by a god, or if we were intelligently designed - because we are most assuredly not intelligently designed, as Shubin demosntrates. What Shubin shows here is that you can only explain various traits, organs, and behaviors we humans exhibit, by evolution. They're inexplicable, not to say inexcusable, if there was some sort of intelligent design! I commend this book completely.
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
One mroe book of Dawkins's to fnish up my set of reviews, and this one was awful! Just kidding. No. Richard dawkins write and awful book? never! This was another excellent one. The title refers to idiotc creationist (is that a tautology?) William paley and his claim that if he found a watch lyign onthe ground eh woudl assume an intelligent creator had made it. he woudl not assume that it arose through mutation and such over time, btu his anaology is flawed, as Dawkins shows.
Dawkins goes on then to completely undermine the creationist claim that complexity cannot arise by itself (it actually doesn't - it arises from the alws of physics and chemistry!) by tackling their prize argument - that of the eye. There is actually a short documentary - which may be on You Tube by now, for all I know - and which takes its title and content from this book. In it, a very young-looking Dawkins makes the same argument with video support. I don't think it's his best documentary, but it's worth a look if you're a Dawkins fan.
In the video he demonstrates the "biomorphs" which he discusses in this book. I was never very impressed with those visually, but in the underlying workings, they do handsomely demonstrate how a small tweak in one "dimension" (the biomorphs have eleven, if I recall, one for each of their 'genes') can have disproportionate effects on the overall appearance - something the creationists simply don't get - along with everything else they don't get about evolution.
So overall, I commend this book as well worth reading.
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
Last but by no means least, this is I think also in my top three. Or four! There are so many to choose from. This is another one taking aim at the evidence-free non-science (read: nonsense) of creationism by addressing the baseless creationist claim that evolution is too improbable to have happened - hence the title! With his usual wit, solid facts, clear arguments and fine writing, Dawkins takes the creationists to the cleaners and makes them pay for the job. I commend it fully.
Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
In the way that The Greatest Show on Earth was a paean to evolution, this book does the same thing for science in general. It's divided into intriguing chapters thus:
- The Anaesthetic of Familiarity
- Drawing Room of Dukes
- Barcodes in the Stars
- Barcodes on the Air
- Barcodes at the Bar
- Hoodwink'd with Faery Fancy
- Unweaving the Uncanny
- Huge Cloudy Symbols of a High Romance
- The Selfish Cooperator
- The Genetic Book of the Dead
- Reweaving the World
- The Balloon of the Mind
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
This is an unabashed paean to evolution and a direct refutation of creationism, lining up as it does, evidence for the former, and kicking down the flimsy lies and evidence-free claims of the latter. It ought to be a school textbook with every student required to read it. I commend it heartily. This may well be my favorite Dawkins book; certainly it's in the top three and I commend it unreservedly.
River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
This book digs into the origin of life rather than the evolution of life, and while the two are separate sciences, they do have a lot in common in that at some point there had to develop a molecule that could survive and replicate itself, as well as change over time in order to survive and thrive in the changing conditions in which it found itself. That's all that evolution is when you get right down to the genomic level. The book also looks at where life might go which is really nothing more than speculation, if somewhat informed speculation. But it's a fun read and I commend it.
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
So here's the one that started it all. Originally published in 1976, the book took a different approach from most books on evolution and started from the perspective of the gene and the genome in general, almost imparting a personality and ambition to genes to propagate themselves at all costs. Dawkins presents it as a sort of a competition, with the most ruthless genes succeeding and weaker ones be damned. In a way it makes sense, but like any perspective on science, it's not the whole story, hence the criticism and controversy this book has stirred up. The fact is though, that it does help sometimes to turn a topic on its head and think outside the box in order to gain a deeper understanding. That's what this book did and why it became so controversial and garnered criticism. I commend it as a worthy read.
A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
This is a collection of Dawkins's essays and is divided into sections containing ramblings on various topics with section headings such as "Science and Sensibility," "Light Will be Thrown," "The Infected Mind," "There is All Africa and Her Prodigies in us" among other topics. The essays, of which there are over thirty, cover a variety of subjects including evolution, fossils, ethics, religion, and as the book cover suggests, "reflections on hope, lies, science, and love." While this is not my favorite of his works, and may be a bit far ranging for some readers, I commend this as a worthy read for anyone who wants a complete collection.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.
It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.
I've read a heck of a lot of what Dawkins has written and it's hard to believe that I've never published a review of any of his books yet, so that gets set straight right now, right here! The first book that brought him to prominence was The Selfish Gene getting on for a half century ago now, and that's one that also set the precedent for controversy that has followed a lot of what he's done and written since. He's been putting out books every few years and also doing TV documentaries. This particular book came out in 2006.
The aim of it is to undermine religious arguments claiming to establish the existence of a god. The book has been criticized for failing to tackle some arguments, but it was never Dawkins's intention to write a definitive refutation of all religious arguments, especially not the ones he considered have been refuted long before he published this. There are other books for that such as Atheism, the Case Agaisnt God and The Atheist Debator's Handbook which I shall review on another occasion.
This book covers questions of whether any god exists - what the ideas are - what people believe, and then considers the arguments for any god's existence - the so-called religious "proofs" from yesteryear, including Thomas Aquinas's "proofs" and so on. Chapter 4 is titled "Why There Almost Certainly is no God" with Dawkins characteristiclaly taking the scientific perspective which errs on the side of caution rather than stridently staking out a position which is what the creationists and other believers do. He points out that the proposition is so lacking in evidence or support that it's really not worth considering seriously.
In subsequent chapters he discusses morality, why religion isn't harmless (as if that wasn't self-evident), and childhood abuses. The book is a solid refutation of religious belief and dominance in society, and is a good starting point for any atheist to educate themselves and arm themselves with some good solid arguments to refute religious claptrap and bullshit. I commend it.
Thursday, November 26, 2020
The Grand Inquisitor's Manual by Jonathan Kirsch
This was a print book I picked up somewhere a long time ago, and just now got around to reading. Frankly, it was boring. Parts were interesting. Many parts were very saddening and even anger-inducing, but that said, it's history and there's nothing we can do about it now except to resolve to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again.
The truly sad thing is that even though we, as individuals, may resolve that and mean it, things are really no better now than they were. No, we typically do not have torture chambers and an organized pogrom against 'others' as we had back then, but people are still demonized, villified and harassed for their beliefs, or their skin color or their sexuality, or their weight, or something else, even in a country like the USA. We've seen this dehumanizing villainy stoked and encouraged by people in positions of power over the last four years in particular, and hatred, division, detestation, and denial have almost become the norm.
With regard to this book, the problem is that it seemed so repetitive. Even as it talked of different locales and different inqusisitors, the talk was largely the same - I mean there was not a lot of variation in how they did this grisly work from one year to the next, or from one country to another. It's the same thing over and over, and the kind of extended exposure to these stories in a book like this seems to serve only to inure and numb people to these horrors.
It saddens me to have to report that I grew bored of it by the time I was about halfway through, and DNF'd it. I can't commend it as a history book unless you're really into documentary detail about the horrific way humans have treated one another through the years, but the religious torture of people still continues in a less organized and less aggressive way.
As I post this, news has just come out of the now right-wing US Supreme Court siding with religious idiots in allowing them to gather en masse - for mass - meaning that Coronavirus, which is already out of control in the US, is now being encourgaged to attack and slaugther many tens of thousands more people than it has already. The fallout from this is going to be horrific. It could be prevented, but selfish, rank stupidity rules this year, it seems.
I don't recall what I was expecting from this book when I bought it, but perhaps my feeling for it has changed since then. Anyway for me, this one was not a worthy read for one reason or another.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Lost Animals by Errol Fuller
This book has about 170 pages of birds, featuring grebes, parakeets, pigeons, rails, warblers, and woodpeckers, and only some 60 pages of other animals, all of which are mammals and there are only seven of those: thylacine, greater short-tailed bat, Caribbean monk seal, Yangtze River dolphin, quagga, Schomburgk's deer, and the Bubal hartebeest. Naturally there are no plants because the title forbids it, but I have to say I was disappointed to see no fish, amphibians or reptiles included.
While this is educational, I think a much better and broader job could have been done. It's like the author just tossed in whatever random critters he happened across and made no effort to diversify at all. What's least shocking is that all of these extinctions are because of humans: hunting, deforestation, other destruction of habitat, and so on. It's the same old selfish, short-sighted, and clueless story, and things are only getting worse with climate change, so while this book does offer some insight into how badly we're screwing our grandchildren - even our children - out of their heritage, it really could have been a lot better, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read as is.
Friday, November 13, 2020
Which President Killed a Man? by James Humes
James Humes was a speechwriter for several Republican presidents, and this is a book of trivia regarding presidents, vice-presidents and first ladies as well as first, lasts, and pets, so if you're into that stuff, this is for you. It consists of a number of topic sections, each populated with a set of questions and a short answer for each, consisting of a few lines to a couple of paragraphs. I found parts of it interesting and parts boring, but then I've never had this fascination for historical trivia the way many seem to do. I'm not one who finds appeal in the endless books that seem to come on offer about the civil war, or presidents, or World War Two (why is it never World War One, I wonder?!), so maybe this held less appeal for me than perhaps it does for some.
That said, I commend it if you're into this sort of thing. It was interesting for the most part to read once, but it's a better read, I think, as a bathroom book which you can dip into from time to time than for a 'settle down and read it like a novel' sort of enterprise, so on that basis I commend it as a worthy read. Of course it's not up to date. It was published in 2002, so disappointingly, it has none of the soap opera antics of a recent president, but there's still plenty to amuse and intrigue.
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