I was often unsure as to whether I was reading prose or poetry. She has such powerful imagery, but more than that she manages to transform even such topics as the body oder from apocrine glands or the ruin of a "whined and thrashed" carcass of a harrowed mouse into a gentle paen on being human. This is not a collection for a pub trivia night- although I feel well armed- but an adventure, that realies on science, history, economics, politics, literature and music to eluciate how our senses define us as human. Ackerman creates a series interlocking ideas to explain the senses, a rose whose petals when gently pried reveal both the senses' origins and their fragility. So here's to the brick oven fornax, callipygous peaches and subliminal touch! As for our students, they would probably find bits quite interesting, and I suppose then that can be our job. There is hardly a lesson in any subject that could not draw upon this information. Love this: "A bird does not sing because it has an answer- it sings because it has a song."
I think that this book as originally shorter and the publisher said that it needed to be "x" number of pages longer to be credible. The last eight pages of each chapter tended to unrelated rambling. She needed a fact checker: horseradish not salt is on the seder table to represent the bitterness of life in exile for the Jewish people.
She is an incredible writer. Her descriptions of things are a delight to behold. The description of a dead animal's appearance was poetic. Her newest book Zoo Keeper...got rave reviews. I heard her interview on NPR talking about the book and the holocaust.
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I was often unsure as to whether I was reading prose or poetry. She has such powerful imagery, but more than that she manages to transform even such topics as the body oder from apocrine glands or the ruin of a "whined and thrashed" carcass of a harrowed mouse into a gentle paen on being human. This is not a collection for a pub trivia night- although I feel well armed- but an adventure, that realies on science, history, economics, politics, literature and music to eluciate how our senses define us as human. Ackerman creates a series interlocking ideas to explain the senses, a rose whose petals when gently pried reveal both the senses' origins and their fragility. So here's to the brick oven fornax, callipygous peaches and subliminal touch!
As for our students, they would probably find bits quite interesting, and I suppose then that can be our job. There is hardly a lesson in any subject that could not draw upon this information.
Love this: "A bird does not sing because it has an answer- it sings because it has a song."
I think that this book as originally shorter and the publisher said that it needed to be "x" number of pages longer to be credible. The last eight pages of each chapter tended to unrelated rambling. She needed a fact checker: horseradish not salt is on the seder table to represent the bitterness of life in exile for the Jewish people.
She is an incredible writer. Her descriptions of things are a delight to behold. The description of a dead animal's appearance was poetic. Her newest book Zoo Keeper...got rave reviews. I heard her interview on NPR talking about the book and the holocaust.
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