alchemistdoctor

It's a very *distinctive* blog

queer chemist with a lot of hobbies


JhoiraArtificer
@JhoiraArtificer

I strongly lean nonfiction, especially history/sociology/science, but I'm open to whatever if you think it's neat!

Also accepting recommendations for print nonfiction bc I am a footnotes sicko, so if you think a book really benefits from the footnotes and should be read in print I am all about that too!


JhoiraArtificer
@JhoiraArtificer

I am entirely sure this is an exaggeration, but so many of the nonfiction science and even history books are "here is a topic and a memoir of someone who cares about it, intertwined". you don't actually have to have a memoir to get me to learn about a topic. I promise.

I came across the book Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone, which sounds interesting. I mean, jellyfish! I've studied them some and I would be interested in an evolutionary perspective on them. But wait!!


alchemistdoctor
@alchemistdoctor

I don't know how the audiobook is (I am an easily overstimulated person when it comes to audio, so audiobooks aren't my thing) but if you want a fascinating read, Venomous was a truly enjoyable read.

It's not a memoir, it's an 'animals make batshit crazy stuff and then humans do batshit crazy stuff to study it' story. The writer does have a few personal anecdotes but they're mostly about how they found/met the crazy person doing the research, since they were a tox student.

It's just. I fucking love me a nutso scientist, dude.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @JhoiraArtificer's post:

in reply to @JhoiraArtificer's post:

extremely "I feel uncomfortable when we are not about me" vibes in this joint, I have to say!!!

(I am far more familiar with Bach's instrumental works than vocal tbh, though obviously I know Saint Matthew's Passion and Mass in b minor -- what's your favorite Bach(s) to sing?)

SCA technically caps at 1600, but I can totally see why music people would have a more granular split. Polyphonic hymns and 12th C troubadour music are just a very different vibe from Dowland's lute pieces. It's a shame that modern music has primed people to think that everything in a minor key is depressing when there's a whole range of emotion being worked with.

I've never been to a Ren faire! (Not a lot in Canada.) They sound super fun tho.

I guess if you believe that all medieval music is Gregorian chant I slightly understand thinking it's all dour... but 1) the author is a trained musician, which requires taking music history, and 2) it's really lovely. but also very much not the only musical thing happening for 500 years, either

two nonfiction books i'm very fond of, but am unaware if there exist any audiobooks, but i feel that you may appreciate the footnote game employed in at least one of these anyway:

Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant. this is a heady, dense, academic text that explores, among other things, a post-marxist idea of inextricably intertwined sustenance and damage, how that's culturally engrained, and how collective trauma gets expressed both to and from these phenomena

Making This Life Significant: a Philosophical Translation of the Daodejing by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall. this requires less introduction and it's less heady and academic but still rather heady and academic. it's close/deep translation of the eponymous chinese philosophical text the depth and breadth of which i have not even seen anyone come close to. absolutely phenomenal reading, and in my case, literally life-changing of a book. i hope it could be for you too!

edit: also neither of these are memoirs

double edit: I LOVE THIS MEDIEVAL MUSIC PLAYLIST ALREADY

in reply to @alchemistdoctor's post:

Oh that sounds fun! I certainly don't mind hearing about the researchers and why they do what they do, I just don't like it when it feels like that's the whole motivation for the book. Or if it is, just say so! "I wanted to know about the people who are passionate about studying venomous animals." I'd read that!

She started studying it and then realized "these guys are nuts," and began to try to meet and understand why they got into it.

It's like a third cool venom science (what we use venom for, why does studying it matter, how do we decide things like how deadly venom is), a third animal fax, and a third interviews/bioessays on the researchers involved. So while she does have the personal element of the context of some of the interviews, I wouldn't call it a memoir, it's not about her as a person in that sense. I definitely enjoyed it and I'm not a memoir person either.