book #3

[realthog]

While looking for something else at the local library -- a research item for Bogus Science -- I spotted Tim M. Berra's Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man (2009) on the Recent Acquisitions display. Since I remembered enjoying Berra's Evolution and the Myth of Creationism and since I'd just finished reading James Scott Bell's dire pro-Intelligent Design novel The Darwin Conspiracy (more about which later), and since I realized I'd never read a Darwin bio, and since Berra's new book is even more concise than the title suggests . . . well, home it went.

This is a really jolly little book, beautifully designed with lots of illustrations, and very nicely written. Based on a lecture Berra's apparently been delivering at regular intervals for some while, it gave me just enough for it to qualify as a genuine biography without very much excess. Plenty of interesting facts came out -- for example, I hadn't realized (or, more accurately, hadn't remembered) that the Beagle's voyage lasted just short of five years, or that Darwin laboured a full eight years of his prime working life classifying 10,000 species of barnacles ("I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before," he declared midway through), or that Darwin shared the same birthday, February 12 1809, with Abraham Lincoln -- a black day for bigots everywhere! And so on.

I'm quite reluctant to let the book go back to the library, in fact. At some point when I'm feeling a bit richer (its cover price of $20 is quite steep for something so small, however much it may be perfectly formed) I must pick up my very own copy to cuddle and cosset.

Comments

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

There's a story I heard Mark Steel tell about Darwin deciding to find out how many worms there were in his garden. After having done this, he dug up many hundreds, spread them out on his billiard table, and studied how they behaved when someone blew tobacco smoke at them or played the bassoon at them.
It was the bassoon that made me love that story. Darwin could have used a trumpet or a drum, but it was a bassoon.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

In fact, the worms were unimpressed by music per se. They did, however, react when he put them on top of Emma's piano while she was playing it.

Berra tells about this, What he omitted to relate was how Emma herself reacted when Charles put his earthworms on her piano while she was playing it.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Emma's friend: `Yesterday we went into Rochester for high tea. How about you?'
Emma: `Oh, Charles did the thing with the earthworms and the piano.'
Emma's friend: `Not again! Oh, you poor dear.'
Emma: `It could have been worse. It could have been the honey badgers. *sigh*'

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Given how Charles wooed her, she should not have been too surprised.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I'm ashamed to admit I know very little about Darwin's life. What was so unusual about his wooing?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, and it's been many, many years since I read it, he described the sexual habits of a number of different species to her. It eventually dawned on her that he was proposing.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"he described the sexual habits of a number of different species to her"

Doesn't everyone propose like that?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Some of us have a more direct, not to say suave technique.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Well, I just got down on one knee on Fleet Street and asked Bogna if she'd marry me.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

That must have been a hell of a date... You're right - after that the earthworms probably didn't faze her at all.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I doubt they would have.