A long holiday weekend

The long holiday weekend comes in handy as I look back over my year of reading... and plan next years lists. Favorites from 2011 include:

• The Contract Surgeon and The Indian Agent by Dan O'Brien
• Doc by Mary Doria Russell
• Blackout by Connie Willis
• Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi
• old favorites reread, and a number of new series started

But generally I notice that my reading was sort of random, wandering, and included a lot of fluff (crap is a better word maybe). A large part of that is due to the availability of free fluff (crap) for the kindle... something I intend to discontinue in 2012.

2012 is going to be the year I get back to the genres that turned me into a reader in the first place; Science Fiction and Fantasy (two separate genres...not one as so many stores mistakenly assume). My overall goal is to read 12 squared books (144) in 2012, separated into 4 categories. You can go here to see the descriptions and a record of my reading throughout the year. Here's a short list:

• Science Fiction (36 titles, includes some real chunks... heavy reading, but important books that I've wanted to read)
• Fantasy (36 titles, again with the heavy books, several rereads of old favorites)
• Military (36 titles, fiction & non-fiction... )
• Collections/Mysteries/Group Reads (36 titles, I must have 100 short story collections in my library, mysteries need to be included somewhere and I'm determined to participate in some group reads in 2012)

As I've reached my goals for 2011 (to read 100 books, I'm currently at 119), I've decided to abandon most of the partially completed books lying around and start counting for 2012 on December 1st (actually I'm starting today, but I won't record anything til Dec. 1) with the new reading lists and goals.  Future posts will include more detail and lists of books for each category.

This is a hefty reading challenge I've set for myself. I look forward to a long year of reading some good stuff...

Teaching Zoology

This coming school year, I will be teaching a high school Zoology class for the third year in a row. That may not seem significant, but if you knew how unstable our science curriculum has been over the last decade... Anyway the class is a semester long survey course. I focus mainly on the large groups of organisms and the progression through time and complexity. We do a number of survey labs where the student examines and answers questions about multiple specimens from a phylum, and we do a series of dissection labs where the students look more closely at a single specimen.

Students are expected to become familiar with the Linnaean classification system, and this generally provides a bit of angst when a student is faced with the following power-point slide:

Phylum Coelenterata: Coelenterata is an obsolete long term encompassing two animal phyla, the Ctenophora (comb jellies) and the Cnidaria (coral animals, true jellies, sea anemones, sea pens, and their allies). The name comes from the Greek "koilos" ("full bellied"), referring to the hollow body cavity common to these two phyla. They have very simple tissue organization, with only two layers of cells, external and internal.

This is of course followed by a discussion of what these things are (jellyfish and corals), lots of pictures,  and a rudimentary classification system where the student is faced with:

Anthozoa—corals and sea anemones 

Medusozoa—jellyfish:

Cubozoa—box jellyfish, sea wasps

Hydrozoa—hydroids, hydra-like animals

Scyphozoa—true jellyfish

Staurozoa—stalked jellyfish

Myxozoa—parasites

Polypodiozoa—parasites

* bolded words are the only ones they HAVE to know for quiz/test

After reviewing the phylum, the students then get to, in the laboratory, examine actual preserved specimens. Some of these are cool, some are gross, some are blah...



    

Operation Mincemeat

My middle name is Clifton. I've often wondered what prompted my parents to pick that name (my mother told me I was named after my paternal grandfather... but his name was actually Clifford...??). I may have inadvertently found the answer... and if not, it still makes a good story.

My father is a big fan of spy novels. John le Carré is his favorite author (sadly, I've never been a fan of le Carré... although I'm willing to give him another go). My father also served in the US Navy (from the mid forties through the mid fifties). His rate was Electrician's Mate and he worked in communications, somewhat peripherally connected to intelligence (at least that's my impression from the few conversations we've had about it).

What does this have to do with my middle name, Operation Mincemeat, etc? I recently purchased a book about Operation Mincemeat (downloaded to Audible actually) and was reading about the event on Wikipedia. Wiki listed a movie, made in 1956, titled The Man Who Never Was, depicting the events of Operation Mincemeat. The starring actor was Clifton Webb.

See?? Chain of events... father works in intelligence--> big fan of spy novels (mostly concerning Europe)--> sees movie released in 1956 about espionage operation during WWII in Europe--> admires the leading actor in movie--> has male child in 1959--> casts about for meaningful name --> ...

Well... who knows. I'll ask him, of course, but at this point in our lives (he is 80 years old after all) I suspect I'll get a standard disavowal of any remembrance or knowledge of why they picked that name for me.

Still, it makes a good story...

A little late... who am I kidding, a LOT late. Anyway, here it is...

My best reads of 2010:

1. Easily topping the list are the three books comprising the Millennium trilogy

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The movies are also very good (the last two only recently became available for the US). They are Swedish and thus subtitled for us English speaking folk... but that wasn't a distraction for me, and added to their authenticity.

2. Best non-fiction

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

3. Best science fiction: this is a tie between

the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy by Walter Jon Williams
and Player of Games by Iain Banks

4. Honorable mention goes to

Pharoah's Army by Tobias Wolff
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonsen
The Deliverance of Physick Dane by Katherine Howe



A complete list (along with commentary) of the books I read in 2010 can be found here.

What a sentimental sap...

So, I was browsing around the movie channels this afternoon on this Christmas-eve eve, and I stopped on the last 45 minutes of the first installment of The Lord of the Rings. Now I am going to unabashedly and unapologetically claim to be an all things LotR fan. If it's got Tolkien, elves, dwarves, wizards, taverns & inns, etc... I'm all in it. The scene where Boromir dies... weeping. My son watches it with me every time, and is nearly as big a fan, but he was looking at me out the corner of his eyes as I wiped my eyes and sniffled my way through the scene... I cry at scenes that I've seen 100 times. I reread the first Harry Potter book... teared up at the end.

Finally!

Mizzou has lost to Oklahoma the last 11 times, including twice in 2007 (the only two losses Missouri had in a year that featured a week at #1 in the polls and a trip to the Big 12 championship game). Last night's 36-27 victory finally exorcised that demon.

I have to be honest... I went to bed. After Oklahoma took the lead at 21-20 late in the 3rd quarter, and Missouri failed to do anything in the next drive; I figured "same *&#^ different year" and wasn't up for the disappointment. Again.

I'm glad I did and I wish I hadn't. Never mind, I DVR'ed it so I can watch and bask, safe in the knowledge that Mizzou finally looks like a team that belongs in the top tier; doing the things... playing defense, controlling the line of scrimmage, rushing the football; that top tier teams do. On to Nebraska... a team that after the last several years, Missouri no longer fears.

Could this be the year??

My Annual Pilgrimage

Dauphin Island near Mobile Alabama. This shot comes from our beach walk taken in November 2009. I post this in anticipation of our upcoming trip. I hope to take ~10 high school biology students, along with ~20 8th grade gifted students to Dauphin Island Sea Lab. The Sea Lab offers classes (of which the beach walk & talk is one).

I LOVE this trip. I can't wait, and I eagerly anticipate it every year.

Ah... the 100 book challenge?

Remember back in, what was it?? January or so, I joined a book group on LibraryThing called the 100 Book Challenge in 2010. Wellll I'm here to report that I've SMASHED that goal of reading a 100 books! Actually I hit that tally better than a month ago... I'm up to 111 books and haven't read that much this month. My new goal is to read 150 books in 2010, certainly doable given that I'm rereading Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series and preparing to start Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars series. Easy, quick reads all.

US Navy Quartermaster humor... trust me, it's funny

Originally found here

Matterhorn by Karl Merlantes

I cannot do a better review than this one for the novel Matterhorn by Karl Merlantes. All I can add is a few comments about a book destined to become a war classic:

1) the author manages to capture the fact that the entire USA managed to lose the Vietnam war. It wasn't solely the fault of the politicians, glory seeking ambitious officers, grunts in the field, or the protesters back home. The racial conflicts, the class conflicts, the indecisive political conflicts... all contributed to the unrest and unpopularity of the war. Merlantes describes all that.

2) War is full of injustices, and Merlantes spends quite a bit of time documenting those injustices... so much so that I quickly tired of it. Fighting in Vietnam was no different than fighting in Korea, or Guadalcanal, or Bastogne, at least for the foot soldier. Merlantes spends about half the book getting to that point.. but he DOES get there.

3) two small things really bothered me, and illustrates the absolute lunacy of war and those who attempt to wage it... first was the military policy on the scouts (recon soldiers using dogs); when the soldier rotated home, the dog was destroyed because they wouldn't or couldn't retrain the dog to work with another soldier... the scout in the book had reupped (volunteered for another 6 month tour) twice so that his dog wouldn't be killed. The second thing was that when a soldier was wounded and evacced to a hospital ship, he was basicly stolen blind. He had to PAY to get a new weapon(s) when he returned to his unit because the sailors on the damned hospital ship stole and sold his weapons.

There's not a lot of new information in this book about the conflict in Vietnam. I'm sure that in 20 or 30 years (maybe sooner) we will have similar books written about Iraq & Afghanistan.