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The book Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species by Joel Sartore is a very beautiful book that is very sad (or at least very sad
to me). The book features truly
stunning photographs of animals who are endangered. So you’ll see a picture of the Wyoming Toad and then learn that
there are only about 586 of them left… Admire the Mississippi Sandhill Crane
and then discover that there are only 155 still around. A book that definitely leaves you wanting to
figure out how we can preserve our wildlife heritage.
We will be reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell for our
January book club meeting. Since I have
not yet read this book let me quote from the copy on the back…A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles and genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.Definitely sounds interesting. Join us on 1/25/14 at 3:00 to share what you thought of the book. We will also be able to see the movie that was made from this book. We will be showing it on 1/18/14 starting at 2:00 (it’s a long movie).
In 2013 the Arroyo Book Club read 12 great books. We covered the classics… Moby Dick in
September… historical fiction with The Virginian (historical now probably
contemporary when written) & Master and Commander… travel with Travels with
Charly… an American’s experience in pre-War Germany in In the Garden of Beasts…
and more. Looking over all the titles
and remembering each book I have to say that my favorite was probably
Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean.
The question was
what is the brightest star in the sky?
Bonus points what is its magnitude?
The brightest star in the sky is Sirius with a magnitude of –1.4. Which leads to the interesting question of
how can something that is the brightest have a negative magnitude? It has to do with the way the brightness
scale was constructed historically.
Ptolemy declared the brightest stars were of the first magnitude and
continued on to the faintest starts at the sixth magnitude. When the scale was codified stars that were
brighter then the first magnitude were accommodated by being given 0 & then
negative numbers.
Meg Cabot’s series featuring ex teen pop-star, current NYC
dorm administrator (and frequent body discoverer & murder solver) Heather
Wells continues in The Bride Wore Size 12. The series is light, fluffy, and amusing and
this book continues the series in that fashion. Here we have Heather finding the body of an RA just as the
freshmen are moving into the dorm. She
(& her co-workers) are also dealing with a VIR (very important resident)
and a obstructionist administration.
And, oh yeah, Heather’s planning her upcoming wedding. Not to worry, of course, Heather works it
all out.
Stephanie Plum is back in Evanovich’s latest … TakedownTwenty. Fans of the series will enjoy this
installment as it is as full of humor as the rest. In this volume Stephanie’s bounty hunting brings her into contact
with a serial killer. She manages to
have a career crisis (& resolve it), bring in her usual array of court dodgers, and even resolve the serial killer mystery, as well as uncover an
urban giraffe on the loose. All of this
is a normal day’s work for Stephanie.