Berkeley’s best book store, Moe’s, is probably the best book store in the world. I’ve been to many a book store, in London, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, Chicago, Paris, Boston, New Delhi, Portland, and New York, and I still think Moe’s is the best. The Strand in Manhattan may be bigger, and Powell’s, in Portland and environs may have more branches and a better web presence, but I always seem to come back more heavily laden from Berkeley than I do from anywhere else in the world. From this latest haul (trip report still to come):
- Seabirds of the World: The Complete Reference, by Jim Enticott (Stackpole, 1997). Not as much detail as either of Harrison’s books on seabirds, or as good reading as Rich Stallcup’s Ocean Birds of the Nearshore Pacific, but an interesting large-format book.
- Sealife: A Complete Guide to the Marine Environment, by Geoffrey Waller, Marc Dando, and Michael Burchett (Smithsonian, 1996).
- Biophilia, by E.O. Wilson (Harvard UP, 1986).
- Sirius: Brightest Diamond in the Night Sky, by Jay Holberg (Springer, 2007).
- The Book of the Moon, by Rick Stroud (Walker, 2009). An ambitious book by an amateur, it compiles an amazing amount of source material into one volume, and it’s pitched at a good level: not too technical for laymen, and not (too) insulting to informed amateurs. One giant hole in the bibliography though: no notice taken of Charles Wood’s Modern Moon, by far the best introduction to the moon for amateur astronomers.
- Deep-Sky Companions: The Messier Objects, by Stephen James O’Meara. (Reprinted with corrections, Cambridge UP, 2000).
- Life in the Undergrowth, by David Attenborough. (BBC Books, 2005).
- The hardcover boxed set of Lord of the Rings released in 2002 in conjunction with Peter Jackson’s film of the trilogy. I finally gave up trying to find the 1988 edition at a reasonable price, and when Moe’s had it for $50, I was sold. (Of course, it turns out all I had to do was check Amazon; they had the set I was looking for $40. But then I wouldn’t be supporting independent local booksellers, now, would I?)
Who knows when I’ll get a chance to read through this haul, but at least I have some good long reads to look forward to!