Lying Low: A Lesson from Dinosaurs...Or What Happens When You Have a Cold

The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte was one of my Christmas books that I dipped into in early January, but had to put aside for work-related reading. Three days of a cold, however, allowed me to plunge back in, and I found myself transported from my living room hideout to the world of the deep past. Brusatte is both a paleontologist of some accomplishment (it seems) and an engaging writer. He effectively communicates his life-long passion for dinosaurs and the joys of the fossil hunt, as well as explaining in very accessible terms the kind of statistically-based research that he and his cronies have done to unravel the mystery of how dinosaurs arose and what doomed them.

That would be enough to make this a book worth reading. But Brusatte also writes extremely evocatively, and his description of what it must have been like to live the final moments of the dinosaurs' world before the earth was hit by an asteroid 66 million years ago is better than any special effects sequence dreamed up by film- or video-makers.

Also thought-provoking is his description of what happened afterwards, with small, timid, generalist mammalian creatures rising to prominence when the dust had settled and the wild fires had burned themselves out. There may be take-home here: specialization into many niches in a diverse landscape comes with its perils. Maybe there's something to be said for maintaining a low profile and the ability to exploit many kinds of opportunities. Must think about this some more, particularly since my time on the couch in the living room has been so fruitful in terms of reflection. 

The photo, by the way, is from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, AL where we spent a wonderful couple of days many years ago.  Our son was eight,  fascinated by dinosaurs, and we'd planned on spending an afternoon there before pushing homeward after a long trans-continental camping trip.  But the place was so interesting that we ended up spending nearly three days investigating the displays and talking to the staff.  By the end of our visit, our guy had started giving little tours to people, explaining what he'd learned and offering opinions on the best fossils. People actually listened to him!  It helped he was very cute and had become quite knowledgeable.  Would love to take his own sons there to look around.

2019: A Year That Begins in a Reading Binge

This season I have six book discussion groups in Montreal-area libraries and I've been paddling fast to keep my head above water.

Usually in the groups I can count on a couple of repetitions, but for the February series I have six new books that I read in January.  In addition my two "just for fun" reading groups--one of neighbors and the other of women who are vaguely somehow connected to McGill University--met in January and I read books for them too.  The month also was the one when I was working on the final revisions to my own book (now called Frenemy Nations: Love and Hate between Neighbo(u)ring States) and I found I had two more books that I had to read to finish the job.

That brings the total to nine books since January 1, which is not too shabby a way to start a year, I think.  I found all except The Hypnotist (a title that I inherited from the usual group leader for whom I'm filling in until June) worth reading, and some of the books were truly good. 

Here's the list, in case you'd like to do your own binge read:

War Plan Red by Kevin Lippert
Le Plongeur de Stéphane Larue
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Mummies of Ürümichi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
The Marble Collector by Cecelia Ahern

Little Women at 150: Still an Influential Book

I had not realized that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. It was the first chapter book I ever read on my own--the first time took three months, but thereafter I must have read it a dozen times.


Not only did I identify with would-be writer Jo, I was strongly affected by the politics of the book. The girls' father was off acting as a chaplain for Union forces during the Civil War, and obviously deeply involved in a great moral combat. There is not a lot about the war in the story, but the great cause of Abolition in the background fueled my growing concern about equality and the importance of acting as a good citizen. A very great and influential book, for me at least.

So I'm looking forward to reading a new book by Anne Boyd Rioux “Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why it Still Matters.” I think I'll also see that my eight year old granddaughter gets a copy for Christmas.

(This illustration is from the edition I was given: so evocative of an era, both when the story took place and when this edition was published.)