75 Books 56-60: George, Dawkins, Conley and Colfer

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56. Dragon Spear – Jessica Day George

This is the final book in this series.  The story follows the discovery of a land where dragon’s have enslaved humans and Creel leads the “good” dragons to rescue the humans and reform the “bad” dragons.  This book was just as entertaining as the earlier ones but lacked a little bit of the funness.  B

57.  The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

I have never actually read a Dawkins book all the way through until now.  Crazy, I know.  I always found his prose less engaging than Hitchens’, but it turns out the reason I wasn’t drawn towards it was because I was reading the wrong thing.  When Dawkins talks about evolution he is absolutely fascinating.  Much of the science in the book seems intuitive to me, probably because I was raised in a world where the science was well established, but there were many interesting examples and Dawkins does a great job of making relatively dry concepts fun and interesting. A

58.  The Ancestors Tale – Richard Dawkins

So, I went on a Dawkins thing and thought I’d follow up the previous book with another of his.  I think this is a book that shows how creative someone can be in the sciences without seeming totally pretentious.  There were a few times that it was a bit much, really anything written first-person from a living thing, but otherwise it was really compelling.  I can see why The Selfish Gene is considered his classic work, but this is very good as well.  It’s really kind of mind-blowing to spend the book thinking that, in a not insignificant way, I’m related to sponges and mushrooms and moss and jellyfish. A

59.  Toward a Rhetoric of Insult – Thomas Conley

I read this book primarily in preparation for my speech at Dragon*Con.  It is about the history and rhetorical uses of insults.  It’s actually quite good and I incorporated a decent amount of it into my speech, much more than I expected to be able to.  Some of the most interesting things he pointed out were the ways insults were important to cultures and to how people interacted.  I really recommend this book if you’re at all interested in the tone debate or if you’d like to read a few good HL Mencken quotes.  A

60. Artemis Fowl – Eoin Colfer

OMG.  This is like my new Harry Potter.  The author describes it as “Die Hard with fairies” and that is totally what it is, except the main character is the 13 year old version of Hans Gruber.  Yes, in my mind, Artemis is a tiny Alan Rickman.  It’s BRILLIANT.  I am so sad that I only have discovered it now.  But it’s OK, because it’s good to know that there’s always something new to discover. A+

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75 Books 56-60: George, Dawkins, Conley and Colfer
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