Wednesday Reading on a Wednesday (who knew?)

[jesse_the_k]

Scatter, adapt, and remember : How Humans Will Survive the Next Extinction Event—Annalee Newitz

print, audio, ebook; English, Chinese & Japanese

4 of 5 stars

Newitz gathers together primary and secondary research on climate science, geology, paleobiology, paleontology, and archeology into a highly readable history of our planet. She’s contagiously optimistic, showing what has always thrived after global extinctions. She provides footnotes and a thorough reading list.

Read if … If you want to read something hopeful about our future.

Avoid if … You’re looking for scientific rigor.

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Word by Word—Kory Stamper

print, audio, ebook

5 of 5 stars

This potty-mouthed book lover details her life's work as a Merriam-Webster lexicographer. I truly LOLed at least twice each page. I read it from the library, immediately bought a hard-copy to loan out and an ebook for comfort reading.

She snarks via korystamper, for example:
“Today in Letters to the Dictionary: fragile masculinity with poor reading comprehension. So, you know, a normal Wednesday.”

A little taste of Stamper's enthusiasm and felicitous phrasing:

begin quote
To be fair, most lexicographers didn’t think much about the people behind dictionaries before they applied for their jobs. For all of my love of English, I gave scant thought to the dictionary and never even realized that there was more than one dictionary; there is no “the dictionary” but rather “a dictionary” or “one of several dictionaries.” The red Webster’s dictionary that we all used is just one of many “Webster’s” dictionaries, published by different publishers; “Webster’s” is not a proprietary name, and so any publisher can slap it on any reference they like. And they do: nearly every American reference publisher since the nineteenth century has put out a reference and called it a “Webster’s.” But I knew none of this until I started working at Merriam-Webster. If I gave dictionaries so little thought, then I gave lexicography itself bugger all.

This is the song of my people. Most lexicographers had no clue that such a career path existed until they were smack in the middle of it.
quote ends

Read if … You have any interest in the English language, how it’s developed, or in how deeply the dictionary reproduces the worst conservative opinion. You want to see someone successfully championing change and engraving it in our canon.

Avoid if … You don’t like words?

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World Atlas of Tea—Krisi Smith print & ebook

2 of 5 stars

I'm fascinated by tea, and this book did teach some things. However, it's triply redundant and missing crucial info. It has some glorious photos with extensive explanatory captions. It has some meh illustrations of the tea trade’s complex web. It has extensive pedestrian prose that repeats the info in the pictures and the illustrations. Smith completely avoids the colonialism issues so fundamental to tea as an early instance of global trade.

Read if … you’re curious about the plant, how it's grown, process, and consumed..

Avoid if … you have to pay for it.

Comments

IKR?

[jesse_the_k]

She doesn't promise that we'll survive without evolution, though.