Haydn, symphony in E flat, no. 99. The traversal continues.
I liked this book. It read well, and was generally informative. It’s not bulky and covers a lot of ground fairly quickly, so it’s not a dense read. It contains fairly standard descriptions of the theory of evolution and its consequences. Despite being quite light, it covered some stuff that was new to me, including a more detailed look at the genetics of the social insects (the Hymenoptera), and an explanation of how it is that the small sperm-large egg dichotomy may have emerged.
This was quite a good selection of prose pieces. The first was a chapter from a book called Timbuktu (by Paul Auster), and featured an intelligent dog as companion to a down-and-out poet. This was the sort of thing that made you want to read the rest of the novel. Another neat thing, by Sam Toperoff, also on the Beasts theme, was written from the point of view of a wise-cracking tarantula. Finally, a short story about a crow and two boys growing up in the south-west US was good, though ultimately a bit bleak.
As is often the way, the themed material didn’t fill the issue, and there was some other stuff there too, including a short story by Martin Amis that was so-so, a depressing account of a trip to a prison by Joyce Carol Oates and the usual photo essay.
Granta 17: while waiting for war. This is a back issue I picked up a while ago.
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