02:24, Friday 29 Feb., 2008 Link

Books read February 2008, with date finished:

• Aphrodite, Isabel Allende (4th)
• Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry, B. S. Johnson (9th)
• Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger (10th)
• The Terminal Beach, J. G. Ballard (12th, r.)
• In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson (13th)
• Science in Action, Bruno Latour (16th)
• t zero, Italo Calvino (19th, r.)
• The Rituals of Infinity, Michael Moorcock (19th, r.)
• Essential Cell Biology, Alberts, Bray, Hopkin, Johnson, Lewis, Raff, Roberts, and Walter (26th)
• Reading the Everyday, Joe Moran (27th)
• Matter, Iain M. Banks (28th)

There's been a smell, biochemistry and science theme: scent last month, then Aphrodite, Latour, Calvino and Essential Cell Biology. It's all felt a bit Powers of 10... not just from seeing the proteins behind the experience of taste and food, but reading straight-forward textbooks and simultaneously being aware the colossal energy and practice of science that went into producing facts.

Science in Action is the stand-out book this month. I studied physics at college, and have had heated debates both with those who regard science as entirely a social construction and those who believe in big-s Science (as a process and as outcomes. Mainly people without a science background curiously). Latour is the first I've read to describe science as I've seen it, and to show in a single breath the complex interplay of humans and nonhumans. Superb.