Book Blog #2: The Search for The Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P. N. Shuker

       The book that I did my second book blog on is The Search for The Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P. N. Shuker. Throughout this book, the author explored numerous accounts of various kinds of undiscovered animals varying from wolves and worms to even sea monsters. There were many things that I liked about this book, one thing being the author's use of in-depth, scientific detail while explaining the reports and sightings recalled by people, as well as what he had uncovered in articles and books. Another thing that I enjoyed about this book was the enormous amount of research that clearly went into it. Countless sources of all kinds are used in order to create the most accurate depiction of the creature that is possible. There are many anecdotes and first-person stories about events that are said to have happened involving certain animals that are being researched in the book make the book itself more entertaining. One thing that I didn't like, however, was the lack of conclusions drawn by the author. The author leaves the reader to ponder the question of whether the creatures are real or not at the end of every description after putting forth all of the known evidence and witness reports. It can be frustrating; to say the least, when suspense has been built up over twenty pages (relatively) just to find out that there is no definitive, scientific conclusion. One thing that I found very surprising while reading this book was the variety of creatures that are believed to be seen by so many different people. The classics that everyone has heard about such as the "Loch Ness Monster" and "Bigfoot" are not the focus of this book. Other creatures such as mysterious, man-eating plants and miniature ink monkeys are some of the many things discussed in this book. This book has brought to light one important thing to me. When I was a child, I used to dream about being a cryptozoologist, and going out to discover all of these strange animals. However, upon reading this book, I realized that much of the work that cryptozoologists do is not in the field actually trying to find the creature. A large part of what they do is researching, studying, and interviewing people who have experienced things that they cannot explain. From this, they put all of their information together and try to come up with a reasonable explanationfor the phenomenon that they were researching. After all of this is done, they might or might not go out on the expeditions that we see on the History or Discovery channel in an attempt to discover the creature that they have been researching for so long. I would recommend this book to my peers if they are interested in science and folklore, but I would caution them not to get their hopes up about getting a definitive answer to the age-old question: "Does Bigfoot really exist?".

Book Blog #1: The Fabric of The Cosmos by Brian Greene

      The book that I did my book blog on is The Fabric of The Cosmos by Brian Greene. I would recommend this book to my peers, however, i would caution them that some of the ideas and concepts, as well as the terminology used in the book is often times hard to understand and the information is difficult to retain. Some of the things that I liked about this book were how the author incorporated so many theories and ideas from various different physicists into his book. The book's focus is not only to improve the reader's understanding of new theories in theoretical physics, but also to strengthen their knowledge of the theories and works of many earlier scientists as well. I also liked how the author describes the information given in the book. He gives examples of how theories that apply to our universe can also be explained by things that we are capable of doing on Earth with the technology that we have today. He also adds a sense of humor that I believe is needed to keep the reader interested in a field of study that would otherwise be easy to get disinterested in. Allusions to present-day icons such as Homer Simpson can be found in the book as hypothetical subjects that the author uses to travel into time or to travel to the horizon of a black hole. There were many facts and ideas brought up in the book that I found very interesting, especially when the author was describing the idea of entropy. Entropy is a concept used to describe the probability or order in which matter can be formed. It is a difficult idea to understand at first, but the author uses a very good example in the book. He first describes a glass with an ice cube inside of it, then describes how most people would normally expect the ice cube to melt into the liquid in the glass. He then introduces the idea that the cube could do the exact opposite. It could, in fact (although extremely unlikely) go from a state of lower entropy to higher entropy. This would result in the ice cube not melting, but instead becomming more solid. I had previous knowledge of the idea of entropy, but I had never thought of using the idea in this way, or to describe such a common event. While writing this book, the author also made sure to be fair to opposing physicists. He described their ideas, and explained why he opposed them, and where he believed that their theories lacked certain information and data. For instance, he described why he believed that Isaac Newton's idea of absolute space was outdated and obsolete through scientific reasoning, as well as with data to support his arguement. Although Newtonian physicists might not have been happy with the resulting theories, they would have agreed that his approach to the arguement was fair. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it broadened my knowledge in various fields of science, but most specifically, the field of theoretical physics.