Reading Lamps and Smoking Jackets

[deluxestogie]

Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. David Quammen

In this rambling narrative, David Quammen discusses theories of species extinctions on islands and in isolated fragments of "nature". He jumps back and forth from a travel log of his modern travels to exotic locales, to the histories of various theories of plant and animal speciation and extinction during the 19th century and through to the 20th. Back and forth.

Sometimes the historical and theoretical debates become tedious to read. But the implications of his explorations are startling. I found the book generally depressing, because all of the magnificent, unique creatures and places across the globe—the ones featured in today's charming, wildlife documentaries and films are already toast. There simply are no wild places left anywhere on earth. Even the great national parks are fragmented, human-altered landscapes that look like what we imagine to be "natural".

If you are interested in the subject, I think it's worth a read. But it's not a casual, comfy book.

Bob

 

[johnny108]

Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. David Quammen

In this rambling narrative, David Quammen discusses theories of species extinctions on islands and in isolated fragments of "nature". He jumps back and forth from a travel log of his modern travels to exotic locales, to the histories of various theories of plant and animal speciation and extinction during the 19th century and through to the 20th. Back and forth.

Sometimes the historical and theoretical debates become tedious to read. But the implications of his explorations are startling. I found the book generally depressing, because all of the magnificent, unique creatures and places across the globe—the ones featured in today's charming, wildlife documentaries and films are already toast. There simply are no wild places left anywhere on earth. Even the great national parks are fragmented, human-altered landscapes that look like what we imagine to be "natural".

If you are interested in the subject, I think it's worth a read. But it's not a casual, comfy book.

Bob

We are doing what we can with our seed collections.

 

[BarG]

Here's a book I'm rereading, I read it a long time ago but circumstances in recent times reminded me of it so I ordered this copy since my original is long lost. A first in a series, but the following books were written written to appear as more fiction. To my knowledge this is a more accurate account of Richard Marcinko.

 

[deluxestogie]

Gosh. My son handed me his copy of Rogue Warrior to read—when he was in high school. He's now 47.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Back in about 1991, I recall my satisfaction with having finally read the very last Dune novel—Chapterhouse: Dune. I knew that it was the very last, because Frank Herbert had died several years earlier. He had not wanted to write a sequel to the original Dune, but the publisher/marketeers browbeat him into those.

And then came the prequels, written by his son, Brian, together with Kevin Anderson. With my completion of Navigators of Dune, I am now caught up to 2017—over a dozen and a half novels beyond Frank's work. (Only 4 more to go, for now.)

The true challenge of writing excellent Science-Fiction (or Fantasy) is known as "world building"—initially creating a unique world. Frank created the unique world of Dune, plopped it into a shocking (future) history of mankind, and a galaxy of habitable and barely-habitable planetary systems. [It was all so bizarre that his original Dune manuscript was rejected by numerous publishers.] Once you have built a new world, with its own version of reality well defined, then sequels (and prequels) are temptingly easy to write.

The quality of all the Dune prequels is reasonably good. Good enough for me to keep purchasing them over decades. They are quite readable, move at a rapid pace, and always tinker with some edgy philosophical issues.

I found this particular novel, Navigators of Dune, uncomfortable at times, mostly because of the friable state of the world (our own world) today. In this Dune narrative, the major players (various factions, families and enterprises) repeatedly justify their vicious attacks against one another as being required for the benefit of humanity. That sounds too familiar.

I will give this particular prequel a B+ (for the benefit of humanity).

Bob