reading notes

by Jonathan Carroll
ISBN: 0312873115
Novels that feature writers writing normally turn me off: I just don’t find the whole meta thing compelling. So I want to say this isn’t really a book about a guy writing a book, because that sounds wrong, and like I wouldn’t like it.
But it isn’t wrong, because Thomas Abbey, son of [...]

by Robert M. Sapolsky
ISBN: 0684838915
Sapolsky enjoys being provocative (just look at his title) yet at the same time he actually cares about delivering accurate information. At the end of each of these essays, he lists items for furthering reading which include the sources he talks about — so if you don’t believe him, or want [...]

by Steven T. Asma
ISBN: 0195163362
The proper term for the screech owls, elephants, or plain old rodents on view in museum displays is a mount. Stuffed animals, well, that is not cool with the curators. The stuffed animals, those are more like the hundreds of multicolored birds stashed away in drawers in the back rooms, bags [...]

by Adam Sacks
ISBN: 1891867717
This is an entire graphic novel about, well, fish. As the title would suggest, anthropomorphized salmon who think.
We all know the basic deal with these fish: born in a river, they grow up, go to the ocean, return to the river they were born in to spawn and then die. Do we [...]

by Mary Roach
ISBN: 0393324826
What happens to dead bodies, and why, makes for some interesting stories. Some of them are even, in addition to being cringe-worthy,quite funny.
This book has chapters about plastic surgeons practicing on decapitated heads, body snatching, the study of decay, and human crash test dummies. Roach also covers how experts can tell [...]

His Dark Materials Book II
by Philip Pullman
ISBN: 0375823468
Note: spoilers in this review. If you don’t want to know anything about what happens, don’t read this until you’ve read the book. If you read Book I, even if you felt only so-so about it, read Book II.
This second book in Pullman’s trilogy is faster-paced and less [...]

by Maud Lavin
ISBN: 0262621703
This book a collection of essays, each of which considers what design says or doesn’t say, and why that may be. Lavin’s concerns range from 1920s German magazine layouts to mid-1990s web writing projects. She positions designers as would-be/could-be cultural critics, and investigates how it was or might be possible for [...]