Here’s our latest dispatch from the basement of the library. We have heard rumors that snow has recently fallen. This can’t be true can it? Obviously at this time of year the calendar says it’s Spring, so temperatures must be balmy and the spring flowers are in full bloom. We would love to smell the flowers with you, but as you know our contract prevents us from venturing upstairs to the outside world. We can only rely on our childhood memories of the outdoors.

We write today of a series of picture books from one of our favorite publishers, DK, short for Dorling Kindersley. They do publish a good number of picture books for children, as well as richly illustrated travel guides, but here we focus on their picture books series aimed at adults. DK in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution publishes a number of single volume works focusing on history, nature, science, travel and more. They tell us that in the days before Wikipedia and the Google, that there used to be printed books called encyclopedias that would tell you a little bit of facts and figures about a lot of things. That’s what these DK books are, an encyclopedic view of a topic. They don’t pretend to give you all the answers, but they do help you to broaden your knowledge of the world we live in and its history.

One of our most recent arrivals in the series is Natural Wonders of the World. In this book you can read about everything from Niagara Falls and the Everglades to the Kalahari Desert and the Siberian taiga. The total book is 438 pages long and each individual entry is a page or two long with a capsule description of the wonder in question with many National Geographic quality photographs and high quality drawings to accompany the text. This book emphasizes what a diverse natural world we reside in and illustrates not only wondrous places, but also the natural processes and phenomena that help shape the world we live in.

Another recent acquisition is Journey: An Illustrated History of Travel. We find this book to be right up our alley. Over 5,000 years of the recorded history of travel can be found in this volume. Here you can read all about the planes, trains, automobiles, boats, bicycles, balloons, stagecoaches, rocket ships and more that people have used to get from point A to point B. The earliest travelers with written records of their journeys were the Mesopotamians and the Minoans, but  the Persians, Phoenicians and Polynesians were not far behind. Today, people are planning trips to asteroids and to Mars. In Journey you can also read about famous travel paths from the Northwest Passage to Route 66. Our favorite entry is the one for the “Hippie Trail.” Apparently in the 1960s lots of hippies hitchhiked their way from Europe to India to seek enlightenment. We remember that the Beatles did this to meet with the Maharishi. We think that the Beatles probably had a better travel agent than your everyday hippie.

Now a cynic or a smartypants would ask, can you cover the natural world in 438 pages, the history of travel in 440 pages, or even remarkable books in 256? Probably not, but we think having a wide knowledge of the world, natural or otherwise, is a good thing to have. That is probably what we like best about the DK/Smithsonian books. We enjoy them because to us they present reading as armchair travel. We try to travel and see and experience as much of the world as is possible, but know that we have neither the time or money to go everywhere we want. Like the National Geographic magazines of old, the DK encyclopedias can help us see the whole world from our small corner of it. They offer a nice perspective on life.

Some of the DK/Smithsonian books we have in the library are:

• Natural Wonders of the World
• Wildlife of the World
• Car: the definitive visual history of the automobile
• Civil war: a visual history
• Design: the definitive visual history
• Fashion: the definitive history of costume and style
• Journey: an illustrated history of travel
• Aircraft: the definitive visual history
• Music: the definitive visual history
• Remarkable Books

You can find others by doing a word search in our online catalog of dorling kindersley.

We have heard that the weather will be especially nice for the last week of August 2017, with pleasant temperatures, sunshine, and low humidity. Alas, fresh air and sunlight is not in the cards for your humble correspondent down in the depths of the library, but he has discovered for you a number of clever titles that have arrived in the latest shipment of books. These five books are kind of a hodge-podge as they don’t really have much in common other than the titles struck me as fairly amusing, but they seem like they might make good reads for the closing days of summer.

First up is Can It & Ferment It: more than 75 satisfying small-batch canning and fermentation recipes for the whole year. Both experienced canners and rank beginners will find good advice in this book, with over 75 all-season recipes for among other things, chutneys, kimchi, and even pickles. From reading the description of this book, I have learned that canners and fermenters are sometimes at  odds with each other. Author Stephanie Thurow attempts to bring them together with advice and recipes that will work for both parties. I must confess that the only canner I really know is Chef Boyardee, but he doesn’t seem to make an appearance in this book.

What would you do if you were a former British Royal Marine who found himself adrift in life feeling bored and disillusioned? If that were me I would probably just try to watch a funny movie on TV or get an ice cream cone. However, if you were Mick Dawson you might try to get together with one of your best mates and attempt to row across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to San Francisco. Lest you think that this was a spur of the moment decision, you should know that Dawson had already twice(!) rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and had also twice made gallant, but unsuccessful, efforts to row solo across the Pacific. Dawson’s new memoir Battling the Oceans in a Rowboat tells the dramatic story of the effort Mick Dawson and his friend Chris Martin made. Did they make it? We’ll let you read the book in order to find out, but suffice to say it’s one exciting story.

I’ll have to admit that I am a fan of cats. So, when I spot a book cover that has a picture with no less than three cats on the cover, I know that I am in the presence of some great literature. Thus I bring to your attention Cat Shining Bright by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. This is the 20th book in the Joe Grey mystery series. Joe Grey, if you have not met him before, is a cat living in the small California coastal town of Molena Point. While Joe may seem like an average, everyday cat, he does have a special talent. He’s great at helping to solve mysteries. Many times he’s better at it than the local Molena Point police. Since Joe does not speak English, he has to make his sleuthing skills visible in other clever ways. In this book, Joe has just become a father to three rambunctious kittens. When Joe stumbles upon a murder in a local hair salon he doesn’t realize his kids are following him inside, and this puts them in great danger. Can Joe, along with his lady cat friend, Dulcie, solve the mystery while protecting his kittens from grave danger? The book will tell you! I’ll add that I generally believe that all cats shine bright. The only exception would have to be the cat my best friend in elementary school had. The only person that cat liked was my friend’s mother. Everyone else, he would hiss at and try to scratch. What he was angry at all the time I’ll never know. He would always hang out in my friend’s basement where we would all want to go to play and he made playtime miserable for everyone. I’ll have to admit that cat was one nasty critter.

I also noticed All Signs Point to Murder by Connie di Marco. This book only has one cat on the cover, but it still seems like  a fun read. The second title in the Zodiac Mystery series,  the first being The Madness of Mercury. San Francisco astrologer Julia Bonatti sees ominous signs in the stars for her friend Geneva Leary’s upcoming wedding day. But Julia is a bridesmaid and she doesn’t want to ruin her friend’s special day. Julia never expected murder though. Can Julia’s astrological skills help her uncover some dark Leary family secrets and perhaps catch a killer?

To end my report I do want to say that I hope that the last title on my recommendations list does not portend the future. It’s an event that would really ruin Labor Day weekend. But I must mention the Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter. This is an officially authorized sequel to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. The action in Baxter’s book takes place 14 years after the events in Wells’ book. Everyone thinks that the Martians have been beaten and the world has moved on. But what if the first Martian invasion was only a practice run? What if the Martians have learned from their mistakes and this time they are coming back to get the job done right? People who recognize the true Martian danger are few and far between, and mostly ignored or laughed at. But, Walter Jenkins, the original narrator of Well’s book, is one of those few. He knows how much trouble Earth and mankind is in, and he is racing to make sure everyone else learns the truth fast.