Most of my books of course come from sellers in Europe (chiefly Germany and the UK), but a fair few this year did also end up traveling here from North America, when all told the American offer was better than those by European sellers.

Bought in 2019 and already read:

From Seattle, WA:

James Hilton: Was It Murder?

Candace Robb: The Apothecary Rose (Derek Perkins audio CD)

From Houston, TX:

Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling (eds.): A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales

Sandra Uwiringiyimana: How Dare the Sun Rise

From Mishawaka, IN:

Daniel Stashower: Teller of Tales

Frederic Raphael & Kenneth McLeish: The Book of Lists

Matin Durrani & Liz Kalaugher: Furry Logic

From McKeesport, PA:

Zen Cho: Sorcerer to the Crown

From Coral Springs, FL:

J.V. Turner: Below the Clock

From St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada:

Jennifer Estep: Kill the Queen

Clayton Rawson: Death from a Top Hat

Bought in 2019 and still on my TBR (don't even comment, please):

From Seattle, WA:

James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (LoA)

Agatha Christie: Rule of Three

From Tucson, AZ:

Stephen King: 11/22/63

From Richmond, TX:

Charles Dickens: Bleak House (Paul Scofield audio CD)

From Houston, TX:

Dorothy Dunnett: The Game of Kings

From Mishawaka, IN:

Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson: Napoleon's Buttons

Mercedes Lackey: Arrows of the Queen

Lois McMasterBujold: The Curse of Chalion

Christopher Hibbert: The Borgias and Their Enemies, 1431-1519

Ted Widmer (ed.): American Speeches: Political Oratory from Patrick Henry to Barack Obama (LoA)

Robert Barr: The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont

C. Daly King: The Curious Mr. Tarrant

Eden Philpotts: The Red Redmaynes

Matthew Pritchard (ed.), Agatha Christie: The Grand Tour: Letters and Photographs from the British Empire Expedition 1922

From Windsor, CT:
Elie Wiesel: Night  / Dawn / The Accident (aka Day)

From Frederick, MD:

Samuel Johnson; E.L. McAdam, Jr. & George Milne (eds.): A Johnson Reader

From Kennesaw, GA:

Christopher Isherwood. A Single Man (Simon Prebble audio CD)

Sebastian Junger: The Perfect Storm (Stanley Tucci audio CD)

From St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada:

Otto Penzler (ed.): Bibliomysteries

(Task: The historic (3d century AD) St. Lucia was Italian; yet, like those of many other saints (including, e.g., St. Andrew and St. Nicholas), the most important celebrations of her holiday don’t occur in her place of origin but somewhere else in the world.

List or create a stack of favorite books (minimum: three) featuring a character’s move or transition from one part of the world to another one (or from one end of a large country, e.g., U.S. Canada, Russia, China or Australia, to the other end.)

Alternatively, tell us: Which book that you acquired this year had to travel the farthest to get to you (regardless whether by plane, sea, or whichever other way, and regardless whether it was a purchase of your own or a gift from someone else)?)

Who would have thought that a book about mosquitoes, bees, eels and the like would be so informative? I really liked the author's style, factual bur framed in humor. All the creatures highlighted use physics to some degree in their lives. A very pleasant surprise.

Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life

by Matin Durrani & Liz Kalaugher

I skipped update posts for Chapters 5 and 6 for my own reasons, as I was more determined to finish what was left of the book than I was in making updates.  This book took a bit longer for me to complete than I'd expected, but life has been quite busy, and there were other books I was wanting to read.  But I've been enjoying Furry Logic, and so I was quite determined to get it read, rather than delegating it to the 'DROPPED' or 'ON HOLD' pile.  The only thing that had been keeping me were other obligations, really, and nothing to do with the book itself.

The truth is, Furry Logic was a formidable read, not exactly a hundred percent enticing, but at the very least, it was presented in a way that I found enjoyable and tolerable.  It doesn't escape my notice that I HAD found parts of this book a little bit boring (which would explain why it was so easy to set it aside for a couple weeks without touching it), and that while the chattiness of the writing style would have bugged me in other books (certain previous Flat Book Society reads), it actually ended up growing on me in this book.

I think the main appeal is that the authors stuck with the subject they promised to present: "The Physics of Animal Life."  There were no random tangents into random historical moments that had nothing to do with the subject, and there were no prolonged, unnecessary ramblings about key people who contributed to the science of certain studies of discoveries.  The authors stuck to their animals, presenting each topic of physics with several examples... and to be honest, that was interesting enough for me.

As much as I hate to compare and contrast certain books, it's hard not to do so.  While certain previous books tended towards mocking or condescending tones, I found this book rather sincere in its presentation.  The authors are immensely fascinated with their subjects, with the animals in this world, and with the way in which physics and biology work together to explain how and why animals do the things they do.  They bring up key names and players in all of the studies presented, and keep to the facts, with maybe a few odd one-liner quips that in no way insult said key people nor their studies.  And in that presentation, I found myself fascinated by the world that this book was presenting to me... enough that I really DID start doing my own searches for pictures, videos, and other information about the gecko, or the pond-skater, or the mantis shrimp.

If I were honest, this book wasn't the best in the world, as I'd mentioned earlier, it DID end up getting a little boring in certain places.  And in fact, between those last two chapters, I found that I'd sort of forgotten what Chapter 5 was about, having to go back to confirm that there was something to do with turtles and magnets and electricity or something.

Chapter 6 was a bit more interesting with the archerfish and how it spits at prey above the surface of the water to obtain food.  I found some of the light scatter analogies a bit tacky (Zombies crossing a line?  Really?), but overall, it was an enjoyable chapter that had me finishing the book a lot earlier than I'd thought I would (I was under the assumption that it would probably be another week or so before I finally finished this book).

Overall, while this book DID provide a lot of science about the animals and the physics presented, it also feels like a rather "skim the surface" type of "facts list" book, where the subject is interesting enough to keep your attention, but not quite enough to satisfy your curiosity.

I will give a kudos to the photo plates that present at the end of my Kindle edition.  Those were neat to look at, and also gives a nice recap summary of the highlights of this book.

Here are a couple of my favorites, including the archerfish photo plate above:

I like how they were able to capture the trajectory and movement of the water while the dog is shaking.  And also, doggy is just cute.  And also, poor doggy in the background is probably getting drenched.  O.O

This particular photo plate, I just found fascinating, as I had trouble picturing the mosquito expelling that drop of blood while feeding.  It's not the prettiest picture in the world, but it still comes off rather artistic... in a physics kind of way.  If that makes any sense.

Abandoned at 85% (page 249 of 294).

Thinking about this book makes me angry. Trying to read it made me even angrier, so I'm not going to bother with the rest of it even though it's less than 50 pages.

The interesting things about animals mentioned in this book could be fit on maybe five pages; the rest is filler. Or I should say that the things that could be interesting would fit on that many pages because the authors made none of it interesting. The authors didn't write any of their arguments clearly; I had to wade through paragraphs and sometimes pages of inanities before they got to their point. By then I just didn't care. They also dumbed their explanations down to the point that I couldn't really follow them; I was too bored to attend to the page.

I can't believe I wasted time on this. If I had bought this book instead of taking it out from the library I'd be tempted to set it on fire.

Previous updates:

15 of 294 pages (I didn't think I'd hate it, apparently)

70 of 294 pages (chattiness hadn't improved)

... but I'm at the point where I basically celebrate any Flat Book Society group read that actually makes a serious effort to deliver (popular) science content without authorial grandstanding, fashion commentary and similar distractions -- and notwithstanding a few silly jokes too many, this book certainly does accomplish that.

Not all of the examples given were new to me, but plenty of them certainly were; and while I would have appreciated a few more diagrams here and there, generally the authors' explanations are easy enough to follow.  As a result of reading this book, my appreciation of our fellow creatures on this earth has certainly grown yet again -- and I also found myself nodding along with this passage from the concluding chapter:

"It is mere convention to talk about biology and physics as if they're unrelated; they're just labels we give to different ways of looking at nature.  Convenient, but not necessarily helpful.  Dividing physicists and biologists -- making them go to separate classes and learn different subjects -- stifles progress.  Each camp ends up speaking a different language: to a physicist, a nucleus is a collection of particles at the heart of an atom; to a biologists, it's a structure at the heart of a cell that contains genes.

 

Many physicists are guilty of believing that everything reduces to physics.  What is an animal, they will say, other than a collection of atoms and molecules made of electrons, neutrons and protons, themselves composed of quarks and gluons?  That's true, but it only gets you so far.  Though we use the movement of air molecules to explain how peacocks create infrasound, we won't know why they make those noises unless we study their mating habits.  The world's a complicated place that can't always be boiled down to physics; and that's without even mentioning animal genetics, neuroscience or physiology."

Hell, yes.  There should be more interdisciplinary learning and scholarly exchange -- and I'd wager to many a student it would make a huge difference, too, not only to learn about the laws of physics in the abstract (or by way of lab experiments) but also to understand where those laws find application in the world surrounding us, in animal life and beyond.