Books read in 2011

[pellegrina]

For the first time in years I have made my target of eight books a month! The figure of 96 does include one book I read twice this year, so if you count the list, it will only come to 95, but since I do include re-reads, it makes no sense to exclude re-reads in the same year. Tomorrow's task will be learning to do pivot tables again so I can run

Comments

[eledonecirrhosa]

I've read the first two Anita Blake novels and they were okay. But friends who have read more of the series warn me that they eventually switch from books with plots to books with no plots and lots of shagging. My friend Jane's review of the last one she read was: "Smut! Pure smut!" and another friend complained that the heroine kept "disappearing into a pile of were-leopards!" :-)

If you liked Ben Goldacre, you might also like John Grant's science books. I've read Bogus Science, and got Corrupted Science as a Xmas pressie.

What did you think of The Scars of Evolution? I've read that and another Elaine Morgan book. I find it peppered with bad science, but some of her 'just so' stories about social evolution make sense, even if they would make equal sense if they happened on the savannah, or up a mountain, or in secret underground caverns (I once saw a spoof of the aquatic ape theory - The Spelunking Ape??? - where we are long and thin to fit down tunnels, we sweat to lubricate our way through burrows, our babies have fat deposits resembling rabbits' and rodents', etc).

[pellegrina]

I read The Scars of Evolution long enough ago that I don't remember much of the detail, and my existing scientific knowledge is way too patchy to be in a position to judge whether her science is good or bad. I do remember suspecting she was skating over a lot of other stuff and that in her enthusiasm to promote her theory, she was probably pushing her arguments a bit too far, but it was an interesting read all the same. I've been reading a lot of blog posts attacking popular science "just so" stories of evolutionary psychology (what's the evidence for gender relations and division of labour in prehistoric humanoids again?) applied to how we "should" be living now. Also the "outsider bravely battling tired old establishment with brave new theory" trope sets off my crank-o-meter something terrible.

[eledonecirrhosa]

You might like Explaining Human Origins by Wiktor Stoczkowski, then. It is an academic analysis of how the evolution "just so" stories are constructed from jigsaw pieces of earlier stories, including mythology and cultural baggage. Sometimes new evidence just gets slotted into the old stories, sometimes it causes them to mutate.

Don't know if there is any physical evidence of division of labour in prehistoric humans (a cavewoman fossilised in the act of doing housework???). IIRC it stems from the fact that we can't explain modern human sexual dimorphism - particularly size and strength differences - in terms of polygynous mating systems or alpha pair mating systems, which is the purpose of that size and strength difference in all other mammals. (Human polygamy is nothing like animal polygamy, because feeble old men don't get beaten up by strapping young men and have their wives stolen as a matter of course).

Therefore it must be for something else... therefore division of labour...