Book Suggestions for September

8/23/2020

Post recommendations for our 'Book of the Month' for September in the comments. Get them in by Saturday, August 29th at 2:00 pm MT so they may be included in the survey. The survey will be available at 3:00 pm.

This is your brain on books...

The Book by Jaun Gris
1913
(Image via Wikiart.org)

6 Comments

Evan link

8/23/2020 01:53:07 pm

The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley

(Amazon blurb:) A collection of the author’s favorite essays and poems. This volume includes selections that span Eiseley’s entire writing career and provide a sampling of the author as naturalist, poet, scientist, and humanist. “Loren Eiseley’s work changed my life” (Ray Bradbury). Introduction by W. H. Auden.

I just discovered Loren Eiseley via a meme a couple of weeks ago. The embedded link (click on my name) will take you to a pdf version of the star thrower story. This is an edited version; I don't know how much editing goes on there, but it was enough to provoke my interest in Eiseley.

From his Wikipedia page: {... was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. ... Science author Orville Prescott praised him as a scientist who "can write with poetic sensibility and with a fine sense of wonder and of reverence before the mysteries of life and nature." Naturalist author Mary Ellen Pitts saw his combination of literary and nature writings as his "quest, not simply for bringing together science and literature ... but a continuation of what the 18th and 19th century British naturalists and Thoreau had done." In praise of "The Unexpected Universe", Ray Bradbury remarked, "[Eiseley] is every writer's writer, and every human's human ... One of us, yet most uncommon ..."}

Here's a link to Ray Bradbury using the word "love" repeatedly in reference to Eiseley's writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YYjFhFGKnE

Sean

8/29/2020 07:00:12 am

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick

By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force.

Evan

8/29/2020 09:07:08 am

Blade Runner watch party!

Madison

8/29/2020 01:10:25 pm

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Andy

8/29/2020 01:11:05 pm

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

Madison

8/29/2020 01:13:02 pm

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Book Suggestions for September

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