Even More 50 Books

Last time I posted about this, I think I only had 9 or 10 more books to go to get to the end of my list-so-far. I've read a few since then. But I'll try to get close to being caught up.

21. How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen. I read this one when working on a thing to send to Girlamatic. It's much like other books of its type, though maybe better than most. Not exactly a fun read, but I learned a few things. Oh, and I reviewed it for CW for Teens.
    
22. Monsters by John Michael Greer. I probably wouldn't have ordered this one if I'd noticed it was published by Llewellyn. Still, it turned out to be rather fun to read. Kind of a peculiar mix of competent folklore research, and an oddly skeptical crackpotism (you'll have to read it to see what I mean; I don't think I could explain without using way too many words).
    
23. West Coast Fossils by R. Ludvigsen and G. Beard. I haven't much to say about this one. It's a guide to fossils, and part of my recent science reading binge. It's got lots of neat stuff in, but isn't the sort of book you go around thrusting into people's hands with the words, "You've got to read this." (Not that I do that anyway. Very often. Library stunt from previous post excepted, of course.)
    
24. Dinosaurs, Spitfires and Sea Dragons by Christopher McGowan. I don't know what the opinion of the scholoary palaeontological community is on this one, but I really liked it. McGowan talked about reconstructing dinosaurs--posture, habits, etc--from the structures of the bones. Kind of like engineering applied to long-dead but once-living creatures. Er. Anyway, it's just the sort of meaty scientific read I like, with clear explanations but lots of unknowns to ponder. Plus it's about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are cool.
    
25. Contact by Carl Sagan. At last, some fiction. Oddly, I actually like the movie version of Contact better than the book. Not that I didn't like the book. I liked it a great deal, it's just that the movie--I thought--was much more successful in getting the point across. By making the setting now instead of a slightly-in-the-future now (which, in the case of the book is now a futuristic near past, though it was slightly-in-the-future at the time) and dispensing with the distracting futuristic sfnal bits and pieces, the movie made everything much more immediate. Instead of a nice speculation on a possibility, it was more like something that really, really might happen. Somehow the movie seemed to have more force because it was smaller. If that makes any sense. I don't think I'm using quite the right words.

Okay, I'm not so close to being caught up, but I'm closer. More soon.