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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
In the past when WWBC has broached this topic, I believe I picked being a college English professor or librarian or other booksish answers. While they’re still true, I’m branching out a little this time into the scientific field.
Stephen @ Reading Freely, if you read this, I know we talked about this book a few years ago on a Top Ten Tuesday post of mine. It might be new to most other WWBC participants, though.
The Last Cold Place: A Field Season Studying Penguins in Antarctica by Naira de Gracia was an excellent book that made me wish I were better at math in school. In a different life where that subject was my best one instead of English, I would have loved to be one of the scientists studying penguins in Antarctica.
Did you know that the penguins on that continent will walk right up to you to see what you’re doing? Humans are not allowed to harm or annoy them in any way, and from what I understand visitors to that continent have respected that rule pretty well for the past few generations.
In fact, on of the other rules for humans who visit Antarctica from what I’ve read is that if you’re walking on a path in the snow and a penguin walks towards you, you are supposed to step off the path and let them pass because they’re probably the ones who created that walkway in the first place. It’s their little bird highway of sorts, and we’re just visitors.
Penguins see humans so rarely there that they are generally not at all afraid of us. I think it would be incredible to stand close to them and watch them waddle by. Yes, I would respect the rules and not touch or otherwise bother them at all…but I would also be imagining what it would be like to gently stroke their feathers and tell them they were good birds before I went back to collecting my data and otherwise being a proper scientist.
(There are a few funny stories in this book about penguins actually wandering inside human shelters and interrupting the scientists as they were working. That is how used to and unbothered they are by us!)
Who else out there would enjoy this sort of work?
This year I’m hoping to read more nonfiction about medical and scientific advances.
While all of my book reviews on this blog are about the speculative fiction genre, I read many other genres as well.
My favourite pieces of media can shift a lot over time, but I will follow the rules and only give one answer this week. 😉
Back in May I dreamed that I was standing in a laboratory watching scientists work. I may have been a scientist, too, although the dream logic wasn’t very clear on that.
I’ve mentioned my interest in science in previous posts here. There’s nothing like finding new books about various branches of science that were written for people who are not experts on the topic.
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
Is anyone else fascinated by neuroplasticity? It’s been a while since I read this, but I do recall being surprised by how much the human mind can adapt when accidents, injuries, or other issues cause damage to it.
