Reading Wednesday

[yuuago]

Talking about anything, even stuff I enjoy, is such a pain in the ass of late. Ugh, effort. I'll blame that feeling on the cold. Anyway --

Last Finished: The last book I finished in 2017 was The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Linsey Fitzharris. As the title suggests, it's a biography of Joseph Lister, who developed techniques for antiseptic surgery in the mid-19th century. Lister was a really neat person; his compassion, interest in microbiology, and willingness to apply scientific method when testing new surgical techniques resulted in some really important developments at a time when germ theory was still controversial. ...Unfortunately, this book had a lot of rather graphic descriptions of Victorian-era surgery cases, so it didn't exactly make for ideal reading during lunch break. :X

Currently Reading: Soft Tissues and Hard Science: Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs by Phillip Manning. This one is about "dinosaur mummies" - cases where parts of the fossil contain not just bone, but fossilized tissue impressions, or (in some very rare cases) actual fossilized tissue. It's mainly focused on a particular fossil excavated about a decade or so ago in the Hell Creek area, but it also discusses the kind of conditions required for this type of fossil to develop, as well as other types of soft tissue fossil finds - including the Middle Cambrian fossils in the Burgess Shale. This book is pretty accessible overall, which I appreciate because it's been ages since I've read anything related to palaeontology, and I've forgotten, like, everything. (Also I am totally going to have to read more about the Burgess Shale invertebrate fossils some time, those critters look like aliens, man. Five eyes on stalks? Groovy.)

Reading Next: Probably Edge of Wild by D K Stone, a murder mystery set in Waterton, Alberta. Reading something set in a location that I have actually been to always feels really weird; it doesn't happen often.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

I did microbiology for three years and yeah. You learn a lot of sad things and get really germphobic for a while. Lister is really interesting, but learning about him takes you through some really gruesome stuff.

(We had to go to this play about Semmelweis and purpural fever and childbirth and it was grisly as fuck. And most of the people in my class hadn't had a lot of experience with theatre, poor things.)

[yuuago]

Yeah, no kidding. Also, I think the fact that it's comparatively recent makes it that much more horrible. I don't remember feeling quite so ill when reading about, say, Black Plague stuff.