Books Beside my Bed

Nothing too racy, sadly.

Part way through two books:

Acquainted With the Night, by Christopher Dewdney, is a well-written and interesting, if somewhat scattered and artificial, journey through the night. If you're going to talk about moths dammit, I want more than a couple of really short pages. Moths are cool. And so are vampire parrots, which get one sentence.

The structure bothers me a little - he's taken a 12 hour night as the template, which happens twice a year in this part of the world. This wouldn't be much of anything if he'd let you forget about it for more than a few pages. There are reminders scattered throughout that he's just making this night up for the sake of convenience. How convenient is it if you have to keep reminding your audience of what you're doing?

But I'm learning lots of interesting stuff, like the fact that vampire parrots exists. And the poetic excerpts he includes are nice little interludes.

I'll leave the next book till tomorrow.