Afraid to sleep

Well, here we are once again after a prolonged absence on my part. I'd like to say it will never happen again but I'm now in the thick of Summer Reading at work and so I'm fairly certain it will happen again. I had planned to have a bunch of posts written so that I would only have to publish and promote but instead I'm finding a giant writer's block in my path. *sigh* At any rate, if you're reading this I've somehow managed to cobble something hopefully coherent together and I'm going to try to get back on schedule.

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker is a dystopian sci-fi novel that takes place in a small town in California. (Is it still dystopian/apocalyptic if it's contained in one area?) The book begins with a young girl in college who is a bit of a misfit on her dorm floor. She doesn't even have much of a relationship with her roommate...and then that roommate doesn't wake up the next morning. This is the start of a sleeping sickness that spreads throughout the city radiating out from the college campus. Written with multiple narrative lines and only a few likable characters this probably isn't the one for you if you're looking for a more straightforward contemporary fiction. This book explores what happens when a biological contagion that is not fully understood (and clearly not prepared for) rapidly spreads and the ensuing chaos. I'm talking about governmental influence, hazmat suits, and lock-down quarantine with all the requisite fear and panic, ya'll. This is disaster relief (contemporary fiction style) meets sci-fi (those afflicted are experiencing REM i.e. dreaming...and it might be precognition). This was a fast paced book (I zipped right through it) which I enjoyed for the most part but I was left feeling like there were a lot of loose ends that the author didn't adequately tie off. So this was ultimately a middle of the road read for me. 5/10

PS Full transparency: I read this book back at the beginning of April. So since I average 1-2 books a week you can imagine just how far behind I really am. O_O

Source: Amazon

What's Up Next: Dread Nation: Rise Up by Justina Ireland

What I'm Currently Reading: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Genetics gone wild...and woolly

YES. That is literally what I have written first in my notes for today's book review. Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History's Most Iconic Extinct Creatures by Ben Mezrich is the perfect mixture of technical science and literary narrative. This book tells the story of Dr. George Church and the Revivalists (a group under his tutelage) who are trying to do what has been thought impossible: Bring back the woolly mammoth from extinction. (I have to wonder if the author received a financial backing from this group because if he didn't then he certainly deserves one. He's a major fanboy.) Mezrich covers not only their attempts at this breakthrough in science but also their competition from Seoul which owns the market on DNA cloning. The company in Seoul believes it is possible to find a complete DNA strand while Church's group thinks that the DNA will be too degraded. They're working from pieces of DNA and splicing together traits unique to woolly mammoths with the hope that a viable fetus can be carried by an Asian elephant. A scientific group dedicated to the reversal of extinction of local flora and fauna in Siberia has begun work on Pleistocene Park which is most likely going to be a functioning reality but will take several years. This is where the woolly mammoths (who wouldn't be technically true mammoths) will reside. The controversy and hubris of scientists (especially geneticists who write DNA/RNA) is extensively discussed and is fascinating to me (and I'd imagine to most laymen). However, this isn't only about the woolly mammoth. It's also an in-depth biography of George Church and how he came to be one of the leading figures in genetics. Total 10/10.

Source: Simon & Schuster

What's Up Next: Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too by Jomny Sun

What I'm Currently Reading: it's 2 days til Christmas so I'm all over the place

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Bees, butterflies, and being a better human being

As long-time readers of the blog know, I love reading and learning about environmental science and what it all means in terms of the conservation of resources. To that end, A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm was a logical choice. (Its predecessor, A Sting in the Tale, which focused on bees exclusively has now been added to the list.) This book focused on Goulson's quest to recreate a meadow with biodiversity of fauna and flora on a plot of land (used to harvest cereal before his purchase) he bought in France. Not only was he hoping to play his part in conservation by starting this project but he was discouraged by the limited resources of his university for conducting wildlife experiments over extended periods of time and hoped this would remedy that problem. He has gone to great lengths to learn as much as he can about the creatures and plants that inhabit his small paradise. Each chapter begins with a small journal excerpt  from the summer months when he and his family live on the property. (These are typically humorous or wistful in turns.) The book was divided into parts which covered his cultivation of the meadow, different plant and animal species and their behavior, his work with bees which was covered in his first book extensively, and ecological conservation. It wasn't written in dry, academic jargon so the layperson should feel comfortable enough to give this book a shot. If you're curious about the mysteries of the natural world or want to dip your toe into conservation/environmental sciences  then I definitely recommend this book to you. (Also, I think we should all read A Sting in the Tale together.)

I love perusing the new additions to the non-fiction section of the library. I've found some real gems there such as the next book up for review: The Great Fire: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide by Lou Ureneck. This is the story of Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker, working in Smyrna at the time of the Turkish soldiers advance through the city. Many people were killed during this time and many Greek and Armenians fled. However, Jennings stayed and along with a naval officer named Halsey Powell they were able to rescue more than 250,000 people. I know very little about this historical event so I'm very excited to read this one.