!! 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
Current / Recent
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
- EP #18: Migraine, Oliver Sacks
- w/BC: How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell
On hold, but intend to return to…
- solo: Snow Crystals, by Kenneth Libbrecht
- solo: A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
[Essays]
Recently Finished
- ILSG 2025 Kilauea &c Field Trip Prep Notes[Personal Notes; Geology]
- 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] - \w/CT: EP#16: Letters, Oliver Sacks (ed. Kate Edgar)
Science
Geology books
- w/CJS: Four Billion Years and Counting: The Geological Heritage of Canada, Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences.
- 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
Other 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
- solo: Land Above the Trees: … Alpine Tundra, Zwinger & Willard
[natural history] - BG: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Duetscher
- 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
Other Non-Fiction
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)
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
- EP #17: 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
Fiction
General
- solo: When the Moon Hits your Eye, John Scalzi
[Fiction] - solo: The Napoleon of Nottingham Hill, G. K. Chesterton
[Fiction] - solo: The Innocence of Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton
[Fiction] - solo: The Man Who was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton
[Fiction] I appear not to have written on this; a pity as I really enjoyed it. - solo: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Prisig [post 2 — extended][Fiction]
- solo: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Prisig [post 1 — short entry]
[Fiction]
Elle Cordova’s SF Book Club
- w/ECclub: I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
[Fiction] - w/ECclub: Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
[Fiction] - w/ECclub: The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guinn
[Fiction]
Shakespeare
- 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
Personal Notes
Geology notes
- ILSG 2025 Kilauea &c Field Trip Notes [Geology]
- 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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