recent reads :]

a few weeks ago i picked up a copy of peter godfrey smith's other minds: the octopus, the sea, and the deep origins of consciousness, and i'm only about halfway through but i'm really enjoying it so far! i also got spirals in time by helen scales, and i've gotten through a few chapters, but it isn't quite as captivating... still very interesting though. other minds also has the benefit of being about octopi, which are very near and dear to my heart 𖹭

and! after years of reading it off a grainy pdf online, i finally splurged on a copy of wonderful life: the burgess shale and the nature of history by stephen jay gould, a particular favorite of mine. for those who are unaware, the burgess shale is a fossil depository discovered in the early 1900s, notable for having greatly preserved the soft parts of many of its fossils. it was an incredible discovery, and the fossils unearthed were dated at around 508 million years old (in the cambrian era)! isn't that incredible, to know what shapes and forms life took such a long time ago? when i'm walking around, i often think about what sorts of creatures crossed the same paths that i have millions of years ago; how they might've looked or sounded, how the earth looked around them... it's humbling to think of the brevity of our existence as humans, amidst the eons of history preceding our evolution. i highly recommend the book to anybody interested in evolutionary biology!

in other non-biology related news, i reread an anthropologist on mars by oliver sacks recently. ten out of ten, that book makes me cry every time, especially the last chapter. i certainly did not expect to feel so seen by it (◞‸◟；) check it out if you are interested in the human condition.

that's all i have for now, though i am voraciously consuming any and all written material about mollusks and biology and other such topics so we'll see what else i can find in the coming weeks.