Ingenious writing about the cosmos and life itself.
An insightful examination of life—not only on Earth, but also where it might exist on the myriad of newly discovered planets and distant stars.
Since the first exoplanets were discovered in 1992, numerous books have explored the subject. Accounts of the origin of life are also an established genre, but science journalist Green, the series editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing, casts her net even wider, adding a compelling exploration of the nature of life as a whole. Almost everyone enjoys discussing the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe despite zero evidence to date. Life on Earth appeared surprisingly soon after the young planet cooled, so it may be inevitable under the right conditions—but what those are remains subject to speculation. Rather than taking up space with unnecessary conjecture, Green begins with history, revealing that few thinkers paid attention to the question until Copernicus and Galileo removed Earth from the center of the universe, after which writers imagined life everywhere, including the sun and moon. Twentieth-century advances turned life into a thorny but interesting problem, so scientists largely gave up cosmic fantasies. Most popular writers followed their lead, but Green gives science fiction a major role, which turns out to be a fascinating approach. The horrors of War of the Worlds play a minor role; Green’s SF authors are a thoughtful group whose work—from Contact to Solaris to Arrival—explores deep questions. How would life operate without Darwinian evolution? Or light? How would an intelligent plant behave? Is there a language spoken without syntax or through smell instead of sound? Scientists point out that Earth is far from the oldest planet in the galaxy; older stars with older planets would have a few billion years’ head start, so we may find them incomprehensible—“not just in the way a person from the Middle Ages couldn’t imagine a computer, more like how we can’t understand what it’s like to be a bat.”
Ingenious writing about the cosmos and life itself.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781335463548
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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