Books for science bloggers

As my small contribution to the Science Blogging Conference, I'm donating four science books to be given to attending bloggers. They are

• Talk Talk Talk: Decoding the Mysteries of Speech by Jay Ingram


• If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott


• Monkey Girl by Edward Humes


• Microcosmos by Brendan Broll

They all have BookCrossing IDs, so that their recipients can see them on the Monado bookshelf and track them on the BookCrossing web site.

All recipients are welcome to pass along any books that they are finished with.

Books read in the last year

The list of books that I read in 2007 is up at my personal blog.

New book: Microcosmos by Brandon Broll

This new book from Firefly Books is a beauty. It is modest in size but has more than 300 pages of luscious photomicrographs of everything from protozoans and pollen grains to nerve cells and carbon nanotubules. Brandon Broll edited it, which I suppose means selected the pictures. They are all from the Science Photo Library of London. It's a late birthday present from my stepdaughter the scientist.

Book: Pooh and the Millenium by John Tyerman Williams

With a perfectly staight "face" and using the logic of the genre, John Tyerman Williams analyzes Winnie the Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner as Ursinian Texts that reveal mystical truths of the Great Bear in the modes of astrology, alchemy, Druids, Arthurian mysteries, the Noah myth, Hermetical truths, tarot, scriptural analysis, the Qabalah, and the female mysteries. The author demonstrates many examples of strained logic, quote mining, special pleading, mystical interpretation, and selective use of random facts to create an apparent pattern.

Here's a sample:

"Pooh's search for honey obviously symbolizes the alchemist's search for gold--the honey-colored metal--and for the honey of truth and spiritual achievement. Still more obviously than the [bees'] tree, the balloon symbolizes the ascent to the higher regions of knowledge and virtue, free from all earthbound trammels"

I think that my favorite section title is "Kanga as Demeter."