The Hotchkiss Bookman: Cold Weather Heating, Steven King, and Climate Change
By Thomas Wills – Wills Gallery and Used Books
Winter Hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
(November 5, 2015) Books, books, books! And books! If you have visited the used bookstore in late October or early November you saw boxes of books piled everywhere. Over the space of just a few days I received over forty good sized boxes of books. This at the same time as I was immersed in completing the November issue of the North Fork Merchant Herald. So, the store looked like an explosion in a book mine for a couple of weeks, and as I write this it is not much better. Walking around the narrow aisles in the store still involves scooting sideways at times.
The upside is that the stock in the store is the best it has been in our first 25 years, particularly in the non-fiction sections like history, gardening and farming, nature, art, and new age/alternative/mystic. The DVD film section is steadily growing and is approaching about a thousand movies.
Winter is coming on, which in the bookstore means that the main room display table has been removed revealing the wood burning heating stove underneath and the kitchen (cookbook section) wood burning range is in use every day. The gardens out in front are pretty much done for the season and I have been working on cleaning them up and doing some soil preparation for next year.
And then there is the art. My studio corner of the shop is currently cluttered with lots of painted wooden flowers in various stages of completion. These will be installed in the Hotchkiss Downtown Improvement street planters over the winter; something that should be colorful and interesting in light of predictions of heavy snowfall by December.
What I’ve been reading:
Doctor Sleep by Steven King. King seems to be hitting his stride again after a series of lame efforts like Cell and Under the Dome. Doctor Sleep, a sequel of sorts to The Shining doesn’t have the literary quality of the last King book I read, Duma Key, but is pretty good. The plot of a young man (the young boy from the Shining grown up) that helps the dying transition to the next level (and sees dead people) echoes the excellent Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz but is different enough to be very entertaining, and very creepy.
Strange Flesh by Michael Olsen is an excellent example of the hacker noir, five minutes from now science fiction of the type that William Gibson and others have pioneered. A first novel from someone I will certainly seek out in the future. Edgy, erotic, and very knowing about the current state of computer/Internet technology. It is basically a thriller/mystery that speculates about the next level of Internet sex economy, connecting Internet-enabled virtual reality sex that incorporates personal robotics. Instead of just seeing things you would feel things. Also creepy.
Six Degrees by Mark Lynas – A book much recommended by many working climate scientists. A little old (2009 edition) but the premise is that award winning British science writer Lynas spent the time to read virtually every peer reviews climate science paper relating to what it would mean to reach the range of warming predicted between now and 2100 in the Fourth IPCC assessment report: from one degree to six degrees. Lynas does an excellent job of making the dry figures, science and predictions very readable.
The general consensus is that we try to keep the global average rise in temperature from going above 2 degrees that been the focus of a COP gathering of world governments in Paris in December 2015. Lynas interpretation of the literature is that it appeared (in 2007) that 2 degrees was unavoidable but quick action could possible head of higher, catastrophic scenarios. Eight years later the situation, due to political inaction, appears even more dire and Lynas’ book, and extrapolated warnings, is still timely.
A Climate for Change – by Dr. Katherine Hayhoe and Pastor Andrew Farley –the husband and wife team of a climate scientist and an evangelical pastor write a book that explains how climate change is happening and why we should care. The uniqueness of the book is its simplicity and Christian arguments. A little too simple for my level of knowledge on the subject, but perfect for those who have only heard a little and perhaps have been misinformed.
ENERGY DARWINISM II: Why a Low Carbon Future Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth – August 2015 – CITI Group – Global perspectives and solutions
A 132 page report from one of the world leading financial groups that looks at climate science and concludes that it will cost a lot less of a hit to GNP’s to pay for mitigation now rather than for the impacts/damage later. This is what the guys with the real money think, or are being told. One of the best explanations I’ve read of the annual intergovernmental COP (conference of parties) meeting process and why the December 2015 Paris COP is crucial.
Fifth Assessment on Climate Change – The International Panel on Climate Change IPCC – 2014. THE report that brings all of the current science together. Start with the headline statements version, then the summary (14,000 plus words) and then the parts of the million word, three part report. I’ve managed the headline version and the summary…
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