After three busy months, a check in on my progress with this reading project:

 

Read:

1. The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (Flat Book Society pick)

2. Pandemic by Sonia Shah (substitute for a DNF)

 

DNF:

1. The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

2. The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel

 

Currently reading The Fever by Sonia Shah (about malaria). Up next is Tom's River by Dan Fagin.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

In addition to the twelve books listed in this post, I hope to read a few of the Flat Book Society picks.

 

1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

3. Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

4. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

5. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

6. This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

8. Code Girls by Liz Mundy

9. Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt

10. Broad Band by Claire L. Evans

11. Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver

12. Tom's River by Dan Fagin

Happy 2019!

 

From my physical non-fiction shelf - Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire by Malcolm E. Barker

 

From my physical fiction shelf - The Turning of Anne Merrick by Christine Blevins. 

 

From my Winter COYER/BoB cycle 24 reading list - Cheer Up, Love by Susan Calman; Mary & Lou and Ted & Rhoda by Jennifer Armstrong; North to You by Tif Marcelo; Sweet Disorder by Rose Lerner; Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan.

 

From 24 Festive Task game: A Dance with Danger by Jeannie Lin, my pick for first book of 2019.

 

From my Science reading list - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert.

 

From my Nixon reading list - The Last of the President's Men by Bob Woodward.

 

 

Inspired by the posts my fellow future potential Science Reading Buddies, I've browsed my shelves, my tbr, and library catalogues for Science-related books that looked interesting.

And when I say inspired, I mean I stole lots of books off those lists also. ;)

 

There are lots and lots of other books I would like to read, but I needed to narrow down a short list.

 

Also, I have created a shelf for the long-list and science books I have read.

Just my two cents :). I´m really looking forward to be reading some more non-fiction.

This book does a great job showing how mankind has effected the Earth and it’s environmental ecosystems, not just in the modern era but for thousands of years. Everything the author discusses is well documented or shown to be very well researched hypotheses.

There have been five mass extinction events: the Cretaceous-Paleogene, the Triassic-Jurassic, the Permian-Triassic, the Late Devonian, and the Ordovician-Silurian. The Sixth Extinction is now in progress in the current Anthropocene (Age of Man) era.

Kolbert begins the book showing how early scientists did not believe in extinction until Cuvier, Lyell and even Darwin pushed forward various hypotheses based on reading of the fossil record.

She then moves into where man starts having a mass effect. We are not just warming the planet but excessive CO2 is acidifying the world’s ocean. We are destroying habit. And in our world travels, we are transporting species out of their native habitat, in effect creating a new Pangea with less diversity. Those of us living in Florida in the United States know all too well the problem invasive species pose.

Many may think that mankind just started having this adverse effect beginning with the Industrial Revolution. However, this book gives compelling evidence that we have been decimating species for thousands of years. As she put it in the book, “Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.” She writes about the growing body of evidence that man was instrumental in the extinction of the meg-fauna between 40-60 thousand years ago.

In the later chapters, she writes about more recent events such as the great bat die-off (due to an invasive fungus), the Sumatran Rhino and the destruction of species we may not even know about as we destroy rain forest habitat.

One reviewer (http://viiamanda.blogspot.com/2014/03/serial-killer-who-me.html) called this book a good horror novel. That is a valid summation. This information in this book is very depressing and at times downright frightening. However, Kolbert infuses a little humor and just the right time. She also hints that there is still hope and time for reversing some things.

A quote from the book sums it all up very well: “A sign in the Hall of Biodiversity offers a quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich: IN PUSHING OTHER SPECIES TO EXTINCTION, HUMANITY IS BUSY SAWING OFF THE LIMB ON WHICH IT PERCHES.”