Back to the bookshelf

Before I left home in early April for a multi-week and multi-country trip, I gathered together the books I had in my bags, on my nightstand, and on my desk. A couple of these might come with me on the trip, but the others would have to go back to the bookshelf.

I like to take a snapshot, every now and then, at the books I have around me. They will often—actually they almost always—show what I have been working on and what I have been thinking about.

When I look at those books, it’s obvious to me what I’ve been doing, but I expect it’s a more difficult cipher for everyone else. I think these are all fascinating topics, so I’ll elaborate on why these particular books were the ones on my desk that day.

Janet Browne’s two volume biography of Darwin is superb. I read it when I was in graduate school, and am reading it again.

Water Relations: I’ve been studying water potential (ψ) as part of my research into soil porosity, sand particle sizes, the drought performance of Zoysia and Cynodon in different soil types, and so on.

Campbell & Norman is full of useful equations. I’ve been looking at temperature and photosynthesis and growth.

Snow Country Tales is a terrific book, one that I’m still slowly reading through. How I came to acquire this one is a long story, and one that I won’t tell here, but I can say that it has to do with my serendipitous discovery that the artwork for a particular type of sake comes directly from this Edo-period masterpiece.

I took a soil fertility class taught by Johannes Lehman when I was in graduate school. We had a lot of other reading, but as I recall, the only textbook was the sixth edition of Soil Fertility and Fertilizers. If I recall correctly, I had that off the shelf to look at something related to C:N ratios of plant residue and of mineral soil.

The Learn Thai book is one I try to study. Turf and soil matters often interrupt my Thai studies.

Road Atlas Japan is a classic. I used this all the time a quarter century ago when I was driving around the Kanto region of Japan. I still pull this book out occasionally, to look up places I’ve been, or to investigate places I want to go.

I was looking at Statistical Rethinking for model construction. There’s some exciting stuff coming up with PACE Turf guidelines, and with PACE Turf in general. As you’ve seen with MLSN, and with other recent recommendations, these guidelines have a bit of data analysis happening in the background.

Then there is Park Nobel’s Plant Physiology. More study of ψ and a glance at the section on the environmental productivity index (EPI).