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The April Arroyo Book Club book is the Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. The book subtitles itself a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary and is described…The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W.C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.Sounds fascinating, particularly for any lover of words. Stop by the library for a copy of the book and plan to join us for discussion on April 23 at 3:00.
In Touch David J. Linden explores just how the sense of touch works. This fascinating book explains how different types of receptor cells in the skin communicate with the spinal cord and the brain and how the brain processes and interprets the signals it receives. Aimed at the science neophyte I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys learning a bit about how they work.
John Scalzi picks up his tale of the Old Man’s War with The End of All Things. The book is essentially four novellas telling the story of what pretty much amounts to the destruction of the social & political structures driving this universe --- or at least their serious revamping. Of course times of serious change provide meat for storytelling and here we have a pilot who is pirated, disembodied and essentially re-embodied as a space ship and primed to be a saboteur; a councilor forced to step up to the highest position to hold a galactic union together; an ordinary soldier seeing how ineffectual what she does is; and the end game that changes everything. Pick it up for an engaging read that does not require that you be familiar with the earlier stories in the universe.
In The Soul of an Octopus Sy Montgomery explores the world of octopuses. Octopuses are fascinating animals and the book is at its best when Montgomery provides facts about the animal, its abilities, its personality, and even its cognition. Though the author does have a tendency to go off the rails a bit when she strives to answer, or even consider, questions of a deeper more philosophical nature I would consider the book worth it for the factual parts.
The question of the week asked about the behavior of the western screech-owl. To answer we will quote from our source’s paragraph on behavior:Nocturnal; becomes active at dusk. Feeds on variety of small mammals, birds, reptiles, large insects, and arachnids, but the primary food is large insects. Small mammals carried to the nest to feed the young often are decapitated by the adults. Surplus food is cached in winter roosting cavities. Roosts by day in cavities or thick vegetation. Sedentary, often staying in the same home range throughtout the year; males may defend a territory for as long as 10 months. Courtship begins as early as February when the male begins calling each night shortly after sunset to attract a mate. The calls cease when a pair is formed.The question (& answer) were taken from p. 355 of Birds of North America: Western Region by Fred J. Alsop III. The book was published by DK Publishing in 2001.
This week’s question was who is Susan La Flesche? Susan La Flesche was the first female Native American physician. La Flesche was an Omaha Indian who graduated first in her class from the Women’s College of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1889.
Nerve Damage by Peter Abrahams could probably be categorized as a mystery/thriller. Roy Valois is an artist whose wife had died in an accident some 15 years earlier. Ray gets a bad diagnosis and starts wondering what his obituary will look like. With the help of a youthful friend he manages to hack into the NY Times and see the obituary which he discovers contains factual misinformation about his wife. He contacts the reporter who wrote the obituary in an attempt to get it corrected and the story really takes off. How did his wife really die? Where did she really work? What relation to any of that could the world today have and why are mysterious people robbing and killing in the wake of his investigation? You’ll need to pick up a copy of the book to find out.