2022, books 10–15

• 10: To know a fly, Vincent G. Dethier
  Tries to be a little too popular. Some pointless "haha, those silly scientists, but look at my common sense" moments.
• 11: The olive: tree of civilization, John Train
  Where the hell was the editor when this was submitted for publication? It's a random concatenation of facts (some dubious and unsourced) with plenty of repetition. Nice pictures, I guess?
• 12: Pet sounds, Jim Fusilli
  More about the Beach Boys in general than specifically about the album. The regular overreaching absurdities, of course, making assumptions about intent, audience reactions, etc. etc.
• 13: The jazz idiom, Jerry Coker
  A bit preachy. "Nobody teaches jazz well, except I of course know how, so let me tell you how nobody is learning the right things..." After that, a bunch of fairly obvious advice.
• 14: Tin Pan Alley, John Shepherd
  Again, overreaching. The section on ragtime and animal dances is filled with unsubstatiated, broad, sweeping statements that are beyond dubious and stray into factually incorrect. Does not make me trust the rest too much. It's OK, just don't believe any of it.
• 15: The cuckoo's egg: tracking a spy through the maze of computer espionage, Cliff Stoll
  A classic. Fun and easy to digest. Is there some questionable editing? Yeah, but nothing too distracting. Is it silly that the afteword gives the true names of some of the characters rather than replacing them in the text? Yeah, kind of. Would a facsimile of Cliff's logbook be a great appendix? Yes, it would.