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  The Investigation

  by Stanisław Lem

  • Rated 2 stars

  Jim H wrote:
  The novels of the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem have been hailed as brilliant. This is either the first or second novel of his that I read, back in the 1970s. I kept reading, waiting for something to happen -- the "aha" moment. It never came.
  
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  Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones

  by Sue Hubbell

  • Rated 4 stars

  Louisa van der Luyden wrote:
  Waiting for Aphrodite is a beautiful book about the little things that run the world, the small beings without bones that occupied this planet long before we mammals came around. In a delightful, poetic way, Sue Hubbell tells how she took her bike to visit the tidal pools in the park near her house in Maine, and observed sponges and sea urchins, millipedes and earthworms, star fish and sea cucumbers. I particularly loved chapter 12 where she writes about bioluminescence, the capacity...
  
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  Adam's Curse

  by Bryan Sykes

  • Rated 4 stars

  Louisa van der Luyden wrote:
  In Adam’s Curse, Bryan Sykes zooms in on the battle of the sexes to a microscopic level: it all comes down to the Y-chromosome which is passed on from father to son, and the mitochondrial DNA which we inherit exclusively from our mothers. The first half of the book is absolutely fascinating and I enjoyed reading about the likely origins and the evolutionary advantages of sexual reproduction, how certain species gave up on sex, as well as the reproduction methods of the blue-headed...
  
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  Daytripper

  Daytripper (collective work)

  by Gabriel Bá, Fabio Moon, Gabriel Bá

  • Rated 3 stars

  Rafal wrote:
  This is a tough one to review. A series of vignettes all ending with the protagonist dying in various ways over the course of his life. I guess the best way to explain it is to imagine that your life was broken down into distinct but overlapping episodes, each one having a distinct beginning and ending along a single thread of existence. Using this idea the author explores the life of one man and the varying potential existences he has. The art is great and makes the entire stry seem both...
  
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• Clown. 1954. Cloth with dustjacket.Emmett & F. Beverly Kelly & Kelly

  

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  Clown. 1954. Cloth with dustjacket.

  by Emmett & F. Beverly Kelly & Kelly

  • Rated 4 stars

  sthurner wrote:
  Clown, Emmett Kelly's 1954 memoir of a life in the circus, was a satisfying read. A friend started telling stories about Kelly, after a session of water walking with a man who ran an art gallery of Red Skelton's paintings, and mentioned that Kelly was a mentor for Skelton. That got me remembering how much I liked the sad-faced hobo clown when I was a child. Kelly was born in Sedan, Kansas, but spent most of his childhood in Cabool, Missouri. I was interested in what life was like back...
  
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