Monday, September 25, 2006

Reading Update

I just finished reading two books. The first one is related to the house construction and that latter was for pleasure. I've started hitting the gym again to try to get the weight down so when I am on a cycle or some such I am often reading. The textbook sized ones don't work out so well for that so I am at the moment reading two books at a time. One at home and the other while working out.

The first book Fundamentals of Building Construction: Materials and Methods was an elementary book for the so-called 'construction science' types. It wasn't bad, but really, it covered a lot of stuff I already knew. I was hoping it had more on the combination of materials - like their properties - and the methods used to employ each one. alas, it was a textbook instead of a reference. The only item I walked away with that I found very interesting was that they are now selling electrochromatic glass. This was something some friends of mine back in HS modeled on the then HPC systems. Pretty mazing that the stuff has gone from that to a commodity item. Next you know, they'lls tart talking about transparent concrete...oh, wait.

The second book was Peter Dodson's The Horned Dinosaurs. I enjoyed it. It was a good book. It covered the knowledge of the ceratopsia. Triceratops has long been by favourite dinosaur and my daughter has her own ceratopsid Iw as really looking forward to reading this book. It was mainly two things: the history of the discovery of the various ceratopsians and the discussion of their unique skeletal characteristics. The chapter of the paleobiology and paleoecology of the ceratopsians was so brief as to be almost offensive. Dodson made very little attempt to paint the picture of what role they filled in the ecology of the Cretaceous or what the world was like around them. This is depressing. He was so focused on the bones and the history of their discovery that he almost completely neglected the fact that these animals were members of an ecology, had a role in said ecology, and that is very interesting and important to the layman. he complains at one point that he doesn't know much of anything about the plant life of the time yet objects to another researcher's hypothesis as to the ceratopsian diet. A lack of knowledge is adressable through a little research!!! :P Alas. Other than that complaint, this is very good book and I recommend it. As you can see from the wikipedia article there have been more discoveries of ceratopsians since the book was written.

My next pair of books to be read are Architectural Working Drawings and Roman Warfare, home and gym reading respectively.

No comments: