Monday, January 21, 2008

A Bit More on Books

To round out the books I purchased from gift cards for Christmas, I settled on the following books.

To continue the paleo theme, I picked up Continents and Supercontinents like I mentioned that I planned to in my last post on books. I also picked up Evolutionary Paleoecology. I wanted to get more paleo themed books, but two others came up that I couldn't ignore.

For what its worth, as a former borderer, I am a bit ashamed that I didn't know as much about Mexican politics or history as I really ought to have. I have been boning up on my Mexican history recently. I digested some of it and even read some on illegal immigration from that country. Some of those books were quite despicable. I saw a new release about the illegal immigration from the Mexican point of view. That seemed intriguing. Considering that its also from a nontrivial mover and shaker in Mexico, Ex Mex seemed like it would be an interesting read even if I might disagree with its conclusions. Then again, I might not: I haven't even cracked it open yet.

Returning to an older theme about building a home, I had a chance to jump on a used and inexpensive copy of a book I almost ordered last year: Prescriptive method for insulating concrete forms in residential construction. I declined way back because it was quite expensive and unavailable except through a trade organization. I also was getting rather frustrated at the time with the land deals that kept getting gummed up in title issues. I stumbled across it at one fifth the price and through Amazon, so I snapped it up. I need it even if its not for this year.

I have been reading and made some progress: I read Designing Embedded Hardware, Polar Dinosaurs of Australia (which I am not happy about, but its my own fault), and Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems (which is about lagerstatten). Disappointingly, there's been none such for the Permian whatsoever. I am half done with Russia's Far East. I set it aside because it required more stop and think time as I went and my daughter wasn't helping with that a whole lot. We got her a gear set for Second Christmas (orthodox) and she loves to play with papa with it.

Plus, my late evenings have been filled with cad drawing madness.

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