Torrey Wenger

@ecologyordie

ecologist, teacher, multipurpose nerd

5169 Siguiendo1697 Seguidores1480 Publicaciones

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Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· 15d

Finished up The Trouble with Poetry & Other Poems by Billy Collins, for the poetry slot in the Booksweet challenge. Plain language, funny, & profound. (Also short.) Poetry is better when it doesn't rhyme? At least for me. How do you get chosen to be a poet laureate anyways? 💙📚

The cover is a head-&-shoulders portrait of a black bear, against an orangish background. (Look at those ears! This is an easy one in #KnockKnockWhosBear.) The author's name is in the bottom quarter, in dark orangish letters on a white background.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· 18d

Ug, I messed up the thread. 🙄 Anyways, there's mysteries & secrets & dark doings. I don't think I've read a story set in that particular time period before, so that was neat. If you like Kingfisher's creepy horror, this is absolutely your book. If you're a natural history nerd, try this book!

The flyleaf of the book has a fly on it! There's a fly (it's got 1 pair of wings & halteres, the little knobby things that help it maneuver) perched on a leaf, with dark leafy shadows everywhere else. I'm sure this is a bot fly.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· 18d

So if the idea of fly larvae inside of living things (the wolf worm of the title) freaks you out, this creepy horror book will be extra horrifying. 😬 Throw in the racial attitudes of the post-Reconstruction South (which were Not Good) & some religious fervor, & that's the background society.

The actual cover is also decorated! There's a simplified version of the plant (with only the "ripe" fly at the tip of the down-curved stem) done in red foil. A quote from the story, "I saw the devil in these woods..." is framed by the stem.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· 18d

I bought a signed copy of T Kingfisher's Wolf Worm. A scientific illustrator is hired to help an entomologist with his book on parasitic insects in the post-Reconstruction South. Only, what happened to the previous illustrator? & why is the wildlife acting so weird? 💙📚 📚🪐 @tkingfisher.com

This is a beautiful cover! I very pretty plant is wound into the words of the title - only on second glance, it's unsettling. The roots are blood red, the curved stem has pupae & flies hanging down instead of flowers, & the 2 red flowers have pollen-bearing stamens that look like jaws full of teeth. Also, there's hornworm caterpillar clinging to the stem that has a dozen or more parasitic wasp eggs attached to it.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jul 18

I forgot about this book! Tempests & Slaughter by Tamora Pierce. This is a Tortall book, which is why I picked it up. Ozorne, who later grows up to be Emperor Mage of Carthak, is one of 3 young prodigies at the imperial University - bound by fate, fated for trouble. But it's not his story.

The title is in fancy gold letters. The background picture is a single white feather, the bottom of which was dipped in gold. There's a puddle of gold that had dropped off the feather. Some of the letters look like they're dripping too.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jul 15

I read Lucy Foley's The Guest List for my "destination wedding" category. (Thanks to the person at Booksweet for the recommendation!) The destination? Murder. OK, the destination is actually a tiny island off the coast of Ireland. But it's a murder mystery, not a romance. 💙📚

"Lucy Foley - The Guest List" is written in large yellow letters, along with a built-in circle showing that this is a Reese's Book Club pick. The tag line, in hard-to-read aqua is "You'd kill to be on it". The picture behind the title is a craggy grey island with a grey stone almost-castle rising up out of a grey sea, with grey storm clouds filling the space behind the words. You're in a boat, with a smidge of railing visible & rain rolling down the "windshield", heading towards this foreboding grey island.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jul 11

Finished up The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin this week (it fits the "nonlinear" category in my library's summer reading challenge) & o. my. gosh. The prologue introduces us to the end of the world (some guy just causes a giant rift in the continent!) & a mother finding her murdered child. 💙📚 📚🪐

The cover shows a close up of an ornate detail on a grey-ish stone wall, with patches of orange-ish lichen. The title & author's name take up the top half of the cover. An orange circle in the bottom right says " winner of the Hugo award 2016”.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jul 4

Finished up The Angels of the Crows by Katherine Addison last night, reading with a flashlight due to a storm taking down a power line somewhere. This fits the "started as fanfic" category for my summer reading challenge. What if Sherlock Holmes was an angel? 💙📚 📚🪐

The Angel of the Crows is written in large orange letters (& in all caps) on a black background. The skyline of 1880s London is drawn in white along the bottom edge with a river of birds lacing behind & thru the title. The silhouettes are pretty obviously pigeons, not crows.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jun 17

So here's what my sister did. She's happy about the decrease in chaos. (I'm not sure where the green chair went to.)

The bright yellow sofa is now perpendicular to the door to the deck, facing the TV. A bunch of not-yet-unpacked moving boxes are behind it, against the wall.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jun 17

I wish the cartoon people in the helpful intro section had been used throughout the instruction book - They're delightful! The realistic people had their eyes closed every single time. It was easy to put together but I don't think I could have done it in my sleep. Maybe they're just very demure?

Adorable cartoon people in the "help" section - have a friend help & call IKEA with questions.

Realistic people flipping over the partially completed couch in step 2.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jun 16

From box to sofa in 2 hours! Thanks, IKEA! (The fancy crochet blanket took 2 & a half years, that wasn't included. 🧶) Now my sister gets to play furniture Tetris - Just out of frame are a bunch of not-unpacked-yet moving boxes. Honestly, the hardest par t was figuring out the sofa cover. 🤷‍♀️

An IKEA sofa in a partial box - they only had cardboard on the edges - next to a green chair, with vertical blinds in the background. I hadn't even got started on the crochet project in the bag on the chair!

That same IKEA sofa, now put together & with a bright yellow sofa cover. A fancy crochet lap blanket (my bad, I didn't check the gauge, it should be bigger 🫤) is draped over the middle. The sofa is pushed into the empty space between the green chair & the sliding glass door to the deck.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jun 12

Here's the fairly abstract cover. (I forgot to include it in the first post.) The first printing of the first books had actual spaceships on them, but now everything's switched to abstract designs. 🤷‍♀️

Blue arches on the top, yellow arches on the bottom, kinda like a paperclip. Ann Leckie's name is across the top & the title, Radiant Star, divides the design in half. There's a bright star with 8 rays in the empty space of the lower arches, a black triangular shape (probably a space ship?), in the empty space of the upper arches, & a yellowish pock-marked ball (probably the planet?) in the upper left of the design.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· May 17

Read the new Murderbot book, Platform Decay by Martha Wells, while I was out of town for a funeral. Murderbot (& Three) have been tasked with a delicate extraction job on this ginormous ring station built round a planet. & of course things get complicated. 💙📚 📚🪐

The cover of Platform Decay shows Murderbot in a sleek mostly white pressure suit, grabbing onto something & facing us. A gold-ish ladder is next to it. (It looked more like falling down an access tube to me but climbing a ladder between halted spaceships is in the book.)

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· May 16

The actual book also has built-in underlining & stars & whatnot, in the same orange-ish color as the sun on the cover, which I don't like as much. We'll see if my opinion changes once I read the book. (This is also not the best choice of color for people with vision problems, like my husband.)

2 pages from the interior. The titles are in orange. On the right-hand page, orange dots in the margin draw attention to part of a paragraph.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· May 16

Finished listening to All You Can Save last week. It's an anthology of climate crisis essays & poems edited by Auana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K Wilkinson. It's part background info, part current efforts, part plans for the future, & part recruitment. 💙📚

The title, All We Can Save, is in large blue letters over a pale orange-ish sun with rays coming out as dotted lines. The subtitle, Truth, Courage, & Solutions for the Climate Crisis, takes up the rest of the space in the sun. A blurb from the New York Times (at top) reads "A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say ... hope?"

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Apr 7

I'm ready for book club! Making History by KJ Parker is a lovely story with an unreliable narrator. Their tyrannical ruler ropes a bunch of academics into creating & building a ruined city (as a pretense for going to war) - What could possibly go wrong? 💙📚 📚🪐

The cover of Making History by KJ Parker shows a white building on a black background. The building is simultaneously being built (there's scaffolding) & being destroyed (there's fires, pieces are crumbling off, etc). The bottom of the building is crumbled into shards. 20-ish tiny figures in red-&-yellow robes are scurrying about.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Feb 4

Just finished up my SSR (silent sustained reading) book. It's hard to read a book in 30 minute chunks once a week. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green is about how a terrible disease is tolerated. & how TB affected everything from clothing to statehood. & how there's hope. 💙📚

Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green has a yellow cover with a large orange circle (a picture of a microscope-eye view of TB?) & a green "embiggen" triangle

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Feb 2

Book haul! The 3 Midsolar Murder books by Mur Lafferty, Earth Girls Are Easy (*not* the movie) by Catherine Stein, Brother Goose by Marsalis Higgs, & Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Doctorow wasn't there but I got the rest signed. & sadly, no one was selling dice! 💙📚 📚🪐

Earth Girls Are Easy with a "manic pixie boy" on the cover, Brother Goose with an old timey still life of a bunch of fruit (& a bird nest), Enshittification with a cussing poop emoji, & 3 neon Midsolar Murders books (well, the 1st one isn't as neon) - all next to a vase full of dice (plus a little string of lights)

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jan 31

Science fiction convention again. Here are this year's shirts. (I also wore the Muppet shirt last year.)

3 t-shirts on a couch, in front of a window: Science Is Real (album by They Might Be Giants, purple & gold), the heads of Dr Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker above the word "science" (from The Muppet Show, grey), & Super Grover striking a heroic pose in front of some clouds (from Sesame Street, light blue).

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jan 22

I finished up another one of my Christmas books, We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, & Malka Older. It's an eclectic (& hopeful!) mix of stories, interviews, & essays. How can we build a better society? There are lots of ideas. 💙📚 📚🪐

An abstract cover of purples, greens, oranges, & reds (& shadows) with wavy green lines. It looks like a planet with moons?

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jan 8

I need more glow-in-the-dark, sparkly, or clear dice. I also need to repack this so the lights are one layer of dice in, to shine thru. (I have some cool dice, like a d30, that are not cool colors. They're on the inside.) #uplift

A vase full of dice, with a battery-powered string of lights. A weirdly shaped red d6 is visible near the bottom. (The red d20 used to flash when you rolled a 20 but alas, the battery has died & cannot be replaced.)

A vase full of dice, with a battery-powered string of lights. The glow-in-the-dark ones & the translucent ones are particularly pretty. I also really like the weirdly pointed d6, near the top.

A vase full of dice, with a battery-powered string of lights. The clear cube has 3 tiny little d6 in it. The FlipDie (the coin with the dragon on it) is cool but not worth it.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jan 5

I love my goofy kids. (The warm-up question was to draw a food web for a Michigan forest.) #EduSky

A coyote (with 3 legs & a tail) & a chicken (also with 3 legs & a tail, plus a beak & some feathers), with a "V" line connecting them & pointing up. This was drawn on lined paper & erased several times.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Jan 2

😍😍😍

A screenshot of The Dog of War cover, showing a chubby corgi cosplaying as a Borg. A red laser shoots from the head gear & the dog is backlit with foggy green light.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Dec 28

I stayed 'til 3 reading one of my Christmas books. (4 more to go, & probably a hundred more tbr.) Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series is lots of fun but I've been inconsistent on picking them up. So I read The Hanging Tree out of sequence. Still fun!

The cover shades from pinks thru purple & blue to green, like a sunset. Per usual, blood is dripping from the title & staining a map of London. The center of the stain is the Tyburn Tree where hangings used to happen back in the day. A fancy car, some pills, & a noose are doodled above the map.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Dec 11

I put this together for my husband. (We met in the book group he was hosting, in the bookstore he co-owned.) It was fun, no tools required - Everything snaps together or is stickers. Mostly wood, too. But it's only been since this summer & some of the stickers are getting loose.

A book nook bookstore on a bookshelf, lighted up & inviting. (2 Neal Stephenson books had to come out to make space.)

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Dec 1

We had a snow day so I finished up a long-incomplete book, Mindset by Carol Dweck. It feels like it's a foundational book in education. Rather than relying on other people's interpretations, I read it myself. 💙📚 #EduSky

The cover of Mindset is mostly white, with the title in large letters near the top & the author's name above that. A band of 3 colors - purple, blue, & green - goes across the middle & says "how we can learn to fulfill our potential" in all caps with a gold-ish circle saying "2 million copies in print". Honestly, it looks very self-help.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Nov 3

I don't know how to link my previous thread here (I could probably figure it out, if I was on a computer instead of my phone) so you'll just have to go find my previous book report. Or just break down & get the book. 😉

A black cat with too many eyes & multiple tentacles for tails twines around the legs of someone standing with a cane. (That's Temple, the wizard who owns the house where the book shop is. The cat shows up eventually.)

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Nov 3

Finished up my next "30 minutes each week, if I'm lucky" book. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah is fantastic. It's a book about growing up during apartheid - so it's terrible - but it's written by Trevor Noah - so it's hilarious. & it's full of good life lessons. & his mom is a force of nature. 💙📚

Trevor Noah with his hand on his head, looking like he's a mural painted on a wall. A woman is walking in front of the mural but not obscuring his face.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Oct 31

Flip the book over like an old Ace Double & you've got the 2nd story, which brackets & extends on Lobo's story. Why does Red go to the diner? What's up with Granny? Hey, was that Papa Bear? POV: Red.

A blonde woman in a red dress & cloak with the silhouette of a human-shaped wolf approaching. A diner & its sign are in the background.

Torrey Wenger@ecologyordie· Oct 31

In the first story, Lobo sees Red come into a diner & is lovestruck. He follows her out of town, to Granny's house even, & things happen. POV: Lobo.