Writing about writing and reading
I believe that Helen Macdonald could be for the life sciences what Carl Sagan was for astronomy and cosmology. There is so much wonder, joy, curiosity, and passion packed into these essays, but also sorrow, nostalgia, and pain at the loss of so much life around us. The subject matter varies widely, from many species …
I very rarely re-read books. There is so much out there, infinitely much out there to read, that how can I spend the precious little time I have on this earth reading something I already read? I'll tell you how: when it's such an indescribably good read that I haven't stopped thinking about it in …
I've been writing (very slowly) about birds. As I read about various birds, I'm finding that they are strange, intelligent, alien creatures living their own full, social, and interesting existence, right next to us. The more I think about birds and other animals, the more I see our overwhelming waste of the beauty right in …
I've never been able to 'get into' poetry before. Now I'm thinking I've just never been introduced to the good stuff, because this book has really grabbed me and made me want to seek out more like it. The book contains three prose poems, or rather, three parts. Part one is about the 16th century …
I like to take breaks at work to walk around and think, but it was raining so I walked around in the parking garage. With springtime arriving, the spiders are out in force, and I noticed that nearly every overhead light I walked under was surrounded and covered in spiderwebs, with multiple spiders clearly visible--a …
Jonas David 