To Open The Sky

A change in approach

In setting up this section, I had to choose whether to make it serious (like most of my Web site) or play it for laughs. Doing the latter, I thought, might be a welcome change of tone. So I decided to indulge myself by injecting some wordplay and a little humor as I deem them appropriate. I enjoy playing with words. God help me, I do love it so. In real life I am an incorrigible punster (Yes, even at two bits a throw)1 and so you can expect a bit of punning (or maybe even two bits)2 here. Not to worry, though; I know that for most people a little wordplay goes a long way. Therefore I won't give free rein to this tendency. Wacky wordplay will not reign here. I will not rain on anyone's serious parade. No more than the occasional glimmer of humor will come rayin' out.

The tone of any review I write, and especially whether I use humor, depends mostly on the book. For example, there's one called Science Made Stupid. It is a real gem, and cries out for a humorous review. Then there are those books, those rare few, that are risible without intending to be. If I review such books, you'll probably find my humor tending to the rude or even ribald side. Of course, humor is in the eye or ear of the beholder or behearer. Y, as they say, MMV.

How I hope this will work someday

I'd like to have a pie graph showing the relative amounts of reviews in each category. I experimented with a javascript bar-graph display showing this. It worked, but did not look very good. Also it added another place where I have to manually enter the numbers of book reviews in each topic. Someday I'll figure out a function to pick up the new numbers from one location and generate the display automatically.

And it occurs to me that a "highlights" list might be useful. Although similar, this would not be the same as favorites; I would include books that I feel are especially worthy of note. An example would be Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: It is memorable both as an account of his life and as philosophy. (I read most of it, years ago, but don't yet have a review.)

The books reviewed here are, for the most part, randomly selected; but their topics are not. The current set of topics is shown in the sidebar, along with approximate counts of titles for each. Expect this to vary as the reviews section evolves.3 Each topic links you to the appropriate section of the recently reorganized reviews roster. (I'm preserving the old roster for those who prefer one list sorted by authors' last names.)

These categories reflect my current interests. Most are self-explanatory. Into "The Language Formerly Known as English" go any titles relating to grammar, spelling, syntax, vocabulary, or word origins — in short, the rules and lore of the language we speak in the United States of America, whether we call that language English or American. I created it for Lynn Truss's book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but I expect to add more titles soon. You'll note that many titles are listed in two or more categories. The new roster, organized by category, lists them in each relevant place.

My goal is to keep the number of categories at around 20. Therefore, I've rejected the traditional selections. For example, I lump archaeology, psychology, sociology and related topics in with anthropology. "Medicine" includes not only diseases and their treatments but human anatomy, physiology, genetics, biotechnology, life extension, and anything related to exercise, fitness, health and nutrition. Astronomy includes the closely related specialties of astrophysics & cosmology, as well as astrobiology and SETI. "Biology" excludes human biology but otherwise gets everything except environment & ecology.

For biographies, look in "Memoirs". For anything related to engineering, transportation, or energy production, look in "Technology" EXCEPT if it has to do with electronics or space — those have their own categories. In like fashion, "Science" takes everything scientific except for the separate sciences I've listed here.

The distinction between "Politics" and "Current events" is vague, I admit. I'll be clarifying that. For now, a reasonable rule of thumb is: anything happening during the current Presidential administration falls under "Current events". It's all idiosyncratic and intuitive. I will not look askance at questions.

Selection of Titles

The non-fiction choices, which are most of the titles reviewed, result from random browsing in bookstores and libraries, a reference found in e.g. a paper, or a recommendation I picked up somewhere. I used to read a lot of science fiction, but I seldom do so today; so the fiction titles on the roster are mostly ones I enjoyed enough back then to revisit so I could review them properly. It's a fairly safe bet that they all would be on anyone's "Top 100" list. Very roughly, my cutoff date for science fiction reading is 1970.

And finally, then or now, I almost never read mainstream fiction. The titles I review in that category, therefore, were chosen because of some special characteristic. For example, the events of 11 September 2001 restored Oriana Fallaci to my attention. I realized that I had a book by her (If the Sun Dies — non-fiction) that I had never read. I corrected that omission and went on to read Interview with History and everything else by her I could find (a novel and a novelette). And it was worth the effort, even if it did cut into my non-fiction reading.

(Elsewhere on my Web site I also review books concerning what might be called space development or space exploitation — that is, the expansion of human presence into the solar system, the ways that might be achieved, and the nature of human activities in that frontier of nearby space. I select these titles carefully for quality of content: How well do they explain the topic they are written about?4 That section is called "Visions of a Space Age"; it is linked in the Main Menu. I'll probably be merging these titles into the main reviews lists.)

Books about Sex

Yes, I read and review books about sex.5 These are non-fiction titles for, as explained above, today I'm more interested in real possibilities. Currently there are more than twelve reviews in this category. The better to control access, I've placed them in a separate section, with appropriate warnings on entry.

NOTE

There is no pornography here. You will find frank discussion of behaviors and characteristics. You will find passages that are in themselves titillating. However, I present them in an analytical context. The only images are those of book covers. So I repeat, I do not consider the contents of this section pornographic (though there is one cover that could be described as "punnagraphic".) A link to the gateway is below.

So many books, so little time

My policy is never to review a book without reading it thoroughly and marking errors (or key passages) with Post-it ™ notes. Alas, I have not always held to this standard. In my list of more than 160 written reviews, some are incomplete and others are skimpier than they should be. I might simply defer putting these deficient reviews online until I can get the book again and do a proper job on it. Realistically, this is not likely to happen, as people are continually writing and publishing new ones.6 So I have set up a list I call "Snapshots" for the rush jobs. If I do manage a full review of one of these neglected books, I can easily promote it to the main roster.