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bookdropping
From 2ST and another used-book store on the Ave, today's haul:
Sensory Exotica, Howard C. Hughes. Get your mind out of the tabloid -- not that Howard Hughes -- and out of the gutter too. Subtitle "A World beyond Human Experience": biosonar, geomagnetic sense, electric-field sense, and chemosensing. Full of wonderful tidbits: that continuous-wave electric fishes oscillate stably to one hour per year; how bee-eye ommatidia have polarization sense orientation that matches up with the sky's Rayleigh scattering when the bee aligns itself with the sun; that if people do have a geomagnetic sense, it may be hindered by wearing polyester and helped by sleeping north-south aligned; all the lovely details about bat sonar brain circuitry. I will warn you that the author at least once uses thewordtetragram "alot".
Ishi, Last of his Tribe, Theodora Kroeber. This was an error: what I was thinking of was Ishi in Two Worlds. Oh well.
Rat Man of Paris, Paul West. I only found Paul West last week, through picking up a book of his about words. This short novel of his seems promising, and at least seems to have his prose.
Honey From Stone, Chet Raymo. Subtitled A Naturalist's Search for God, but from the book I've read of his ought not to be like that, you know, Gary Zukav or Lyall Watson or even Loren Eiseley in his more tasteless moments. But not Annie Dillard, either; Lewis Thomas, maybe.
When I called out to the Absolute, I was answered by the wind. If it was God's voice in the wind, then I heard it.
Sensory Exotica, Howard C. Hughes. Get your mind out of the tabloid -- not that Howard Hughes -- and out of the gutter too. Subtitle "A World beyond Human Experience": biosonar, geomagnetic sense, electric-field sense, and chemosensing. Full of wonderful tidbits: that continuous-wave electric fishes oscillate stably to one hour per year; how bee-eye ommatidia have polarization sense orientation that matches up with the sky's Rayleigh scattering when the bee aligns itself with the sun; that if people do have a geomagnetic sense, it may be hindered by wearing polyester and helped by sleeping north-south aligned; all the lovely details about bat sonar brain circuitry. I will warn you that the author at least once uses the
Ishi, Last of his Tribe, Theodora Kroeber. This was an error: what I was thinking of was Ishi in Two Worlds. Oh well.
Rat Man of Paris, Paul West. I only found Paul West last week, through picking up a book of his about words. This short novel of his seems promising, and at least seems to have his prose.
Honey From Stone, Chet Raymo. Subtitled A Naturalist's Search for God, but from the book I've read of his ought not to be like that, you know, Gary Zukav or Lyall Watson or even Loren Eiseley in his more tasteless moments. But not Annie Dillard, either; Lewis Thomas, maybe.
When I called out to the Absolute, I was answered by the wind. If it was God's voice in the wind, then I heard it.