Latest Non-Fiction Reads

Lately I've been tearing through non-fiction at a vastly accelerated rate, and forgetting to share all of the awesome things I've found!  So here's a catch up, 

Science Ink

I read about this book online only last week and immediately posted two of the pictures from the review to Pinterest, and then put the book on hold through our library.

I can't believe in all of my years of studying science-adjacent subjects, I've never thought of getting a science-themed tattoo.

I'm not inked, but I've always wanted a tattoo...  just never settled on something that means enough to me and is unchangeable enough to be forever on my skin.  Maybe now I have no excuse?

There are so many brilliant pictures in this book, but my favourites include a tree of life...

And some palaeoanthropological pretties, of course :-)

The AWW Cooking School

The best part of this book is the double page spreads that compare different types of the same food group, for example, pasta (click to embiggen):

There's one for salad greens, one for vegetables, one for rice, one for noodles, and more.  There are some brilliant technical lessons, and techniques for making the most basic things - you know, those things that everyone notices if you screw up!

It's such a hefty volume, and includes food inspired by many of the different cuisines that influence Australian and New Zealand home cooking, that it might be all you need (other than Edmond's).  There's also a version for kids (I saw this in the library and it looks just as fabulous!), and both versions are marked down over at Mighty Ape right now (use the links above).

The Modern Library:  The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950

I never really like books like this because everyone has a different opinion of what the 'best' of this or that is, and I rarely agree.  This book, though, is well-written, took input from people from around the world, and doesn't seem to dwell on the same books that everyone is told they should read.

Of course Lord of the Flies is there, Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, and The Bell Jar, but there are others that I've never heard of, like Lucky Jim, The Little Girls, and What a Carve Up!*.  Some are even set outside of America and the UK!  Maurice Gee and Janet Frame feature, and there are stories set in China, India, South Africa, and Australia too**.  If you're looking for a list of books from outside of your genre, this might just be it.

*Please don't tell me how ignorant I am of brilliant literature - as I've said before, I don't claim to know everything (or anything) about literature!

**All links are to the cheapest editions on Mighty Ape at the time of writing this post, but most have other editions to choose from.

Pinterest

Hi there!  It's been a long time since I have done a links of the week post, and I think it'll be a long time until I do another one.  Instead, I've been pinning.  And pinning, and pinning, and pinning.  I'm obsessed with Pinterest.  There is a button on my firefox tool bar so that wherever I go on this great wide internet, I can pin pictures that link to articles/shops/blog posts/websites.  You can find me on Pinterest here, and see what I spend all of my days and nights doing instead of being productive here.  Does anyone else pin?  Leave me a comment so I can go visit your boards and follow you!

If you have no idea what Pinterest is, I'm looking at you like this O.o

These are my boards.  As you wander the internet, you can pin a picture to your board by going to your account and putting in the url of the site where you found the image.  Pinterest looks for images on that site, asks you to choose which one if there's more than one, and then asks if you'd like to comment on the picture.  It then puts all of your pictures in one place, organised into boards you name.  I love being able to pin a half a dozen pictures of shoes and then look at them all at once before choosing the pair I like the most (and then not buying them because I'm not rich).

As you can see, I have a lot of work to do in the Books Worth Reading section, and have gone overboard on the wearables.  But such is life.  Go look!  One of the best things about Pinterest is that you can click on the image, and it will take you to the original website where you found the image, so, if you're not like me and are in fact rich, you can buy those shoes.  :-)  Happy pinning