Sunday, July 02, 2006

Reading Update

I finished Terrestrial Ecosystems Through Time: Evolutionary Paleoecology of Terrestrial Plants and Animals. This is an excellent book. My kudos to Carlos Yu for pointing it out to me. It's a tad dated in a few areas since it was published about 15 years ago, but its still a must read for anyone wanting to either study past ecosystems or design ones for strange planets. I've marked some pages up and I might do a Mike Ralls style note dump here.

I also finished reading Building with Structural Insulated Panels in less than a day. It was a light read and pointed out some strengths and weaknesses with SIPs. It was meant for the contractor than the end homeowner.

I followed this through with The Late Devonian Mass Extinction. It was interesting. McGhee is definitely of a different camp than of Hallam. The latter supports impacts for extinctions and the former oceanic anoxia with marine regression/transgressions as the kill mechanism for most mass extinctions. They're both marine guys, so reading this has been interesting.

I am now 25% done with reading Insulating Concrete Forms Construction. It's a quick read too and in the same vein as the SIPs book. I should be done in the next few days. I'd be done today if not for a joyous event.

After this I think I will tackle a book on fossil big cats, then another on ICFs, and then either one on the Permian Extinction or how ecosystems spread into areas after the glaciers retreated in NorAm. I have a couple more books to read after that, but I suspect that I am going to need to pick up some more construction/architecture books before the month is out. I have meetings with architects on the 10th and the 19th. One step forward. ;)

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