!! I didn’t expect to see anyone here, but welcome!! To orient you:

• These are personal notes, not reviews. Some are incompl—.
• Book Notes often telegraphic chapter by chapter jottings.
• Essay Notes are on anthologies; a few on my <n> favorites.
• Personal Notes are on writing, travel and geology.
• I apply categories consistently; the category widget may help.
• Ignore prefixes: they refer to personal projects.

• For more about me see https://tomeri.org
• Comments are turned off; if you want them on, write and I will consider…
• You can reach me at snowfall@acm.org. 

Contents updated ~weekly, most recently 29 March 2025

Contents

Pending/In-process Notes

• w/CJS: Four Billion Years and Counting: The Geological Heritage of Canada, Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences.
• w/RB: The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell us about Ourselves, Eric R. Kandel
• w/26-min: The Catalyst: RNA and…, Thomas Cech

On hold, but intend to return to…

• solo: Snow Crystals, by Kenneth Libbrecht
• solo: A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
  [Essays]
• ILSG 2025 Kilauea &c Field Trip Prep Notes
  [Personal Notes] – in (slow) progress

Recently Read

• w/ECclub: I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
  [Fiction]
• w/ECclub: Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
  [Fiction]
• w/26min-BC: Why Machines Learn, Anil Ananthaswamy
  [Science]
• w/ECclub: The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guinn
  [Fiction]
• w/ CT: When I was a Child I Read Books, Marilyn Robinson
  [Essays]
• solo: When the Moon Hits your Eye, John Scalzi
  [Fiction]
• w/CT: EP#16: Letters, Oliver Sacks (ed. Kate Edgar)
• solo: The Innocence of Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton
  [Fiction]
• solo: The Napoleon of Nottingham Hill, G. K. Chesterton
  [Fiction]
• solo: Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald.
  [Essays]
• solo: Land Above the Trees: … Alpine Tundra, Zwinger & Willard
  [natural history]
• See “Shakespeare” category
• w/CJS: Best Science & Nature Writing, 2022 
  [science]
• BG: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Duetscher
  [science]
• w/RB: The Master Builder: … Science of the Cell…, Alfonso Arias 
  [science]
• w/RB: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, by Zoë Schlanger [science]

Elle Cordova’s SF Book Club

• w/ECclub: The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin
  [Fiction]

• General notes for Shakespeare Course
• The Taming of the Shrew
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Much Ado about Nothing
• The Tempest
• Measure by Measure
• Henry V
• Othello
• Macbeth
• The Winter’s Tale
• Cymbeline

Science

General Science

• w/26-min: The Catalyst: RNA and…, Thomas Cech 
• w/26min-BC: Why Machines Learn, Anil Ananthaswamy
• solo: Snow Crystals, by Kenneth Libbrecht
• w/26min-BC: Why Machines Learn, Anil Ananthaswamy
• w/CJS: Four Billion Years and Counting: The Geological Heritage of Canada, 2014
• w/RB: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, by Zoë Schlanger
• w/CJS: Best Science & Nature Writing, 2022 
• w/RB: The Master Builder: … Science of the Cell…, Alfonso Arias 
• EP#14: 2023 Best Science & Nature Writing–Overview
• w/CJS: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach
• w/CJS: Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind*, Brian Fagan
• w/RB: An Immense World, Ed Yong
• w/CJS: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, David Quammen
• w/KC: Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980
• w/CJS: Alien Oceans: : The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, Kevin Peter Hand
• w/KC: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds…, Sheldrake

Geology books

• w/CJS: Assembling California*, John McPhee
• w/CJS: The Ends of the World, Peter Brannon
• w/CJS: Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds, Thomas Halliday- Introduction
• solo-LS: A Wilder Time,* William E. Glassley
• solo-LS: Finding the Forest, Peter Bundy
• solo-LS: The High Sierra: A Love Story, Kim Stanley Robinson
• w/CJS: Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn
• solo-LS: Writing Landscape, Linda Cracknell

Oliver Sacks

• EP#16: Letters, Oliver Sacks (ed. Kate Edgar)
• EP #`13: Awakenings, Oliver Sacks
• EP#12: The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks
• EP #11: Uncle Tungsten*, Oliver Sacks, 2001
• EP #10: The River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks
• EP #9: On the Move, Oliver Sacks
• EP #8: Oaxaca Journal, Oliver Sacks
• EP #7: Everything in Its Place, Oliver Sacks

Essays

Anthologies

• EP#15: The Making of the American Essay*
• EP #5: Favorites from TGAofAE** 1945-1970
• EP #6: Favorites from the Contemporary American Essay
• EP #3: Favorites from Best American Essays of the 20thC
• EP #2: Favorites from Best Am. Essays of 2020
• EP #2: Best Am. Essays of 2020 – First look…
• EP #1: Ten Favorites from The Oxford Book of Essays**

Single-authored Collections

• w/ CT: When I was a Child I Read Books, Marilyn Robinson
• solo: Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald
• solo-LS: Writing Landscape, Linda Cracknell
• w/KC: Four Essays by E. B. White* [The Planet]
• w/KC: The Immense Journey, Loren Eisley
• BG: A Book of Essays by David Foster Wallace
• w/KC: Three Essays [Florida] by E. B. White
• EP #4: Five Essays by Chesterton
• Essays: G. K. Chesterton: family & sociability
• Also see “Oliver Sacks” category…

Individual Essays

• Reflections on “Glaciology,” by Lia Purpura
• Thoughts on “Of Fragments and Segments” by Heidi Czerwiec 
• A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

Other Books

Fiction

• The Napoleon of Nottingham Hill, G. K. Chesterton

History & Social Analysis books

• BG: Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, Paul Scharre
• BG: The Power Law: Venture Capital and…, Sebastian Mallaby
• BG: The Dictionary People: The … who Created the Oxford English Dictionary, Sarah Olgilvie
• BG: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence, Tim Parks
• BG: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Greaerber & Wengrow – A few notes
• BG: Mni Sota Macoce: Land of the Dakota, Gwen Westerman & Bruce White
• BG: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond –short note

Travel books

• LS: A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
• BG: To Shake the Sleeping Self, Jedidiah Jenkins
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)

Personal Notes

Geology notes

• Notes on the Geology of Southwest England
• Learning by Answering Questions (Reddit)
• ILSG 2023 Conference Notes
• Notes on Graphic Granite and Perthitic Textures
• Notes on the Geology of Baja
• What is this Rock, 3: Course Notes
• Notes on my Shakespeare course at the U of MN, Fall 2024

Travel notes

• London, 2024
• Keneewan Peninsula, 2024 — notes
• Amsterdam, October 2023  [personal diary]
• Iceland 2022, Day 0: Recovery Day in Reykjavik
• Iceland 2022, Travel Day: The Yellow Duffle
• Yosemite Trip, June 2022

Notes on the craft of writing

• March Danceness: Notes on an Essay Contest
• Reflections on Nine Drafts of an Essay
• Writing Notes: Essay Status as of October 2023
• Writing Exercises, 1 (From OBE)
• Spring 2022 Reading Projects
• Things I learned from the 2021 Loft Essay course
• What I’ve Learned from Critiquing SF&F

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