Wow!

I just got a little birthday present (well, they didn't KNOW, but I'm going to consider it as such) from Oxford U. Press.

Those of you not in academia may not be aware that textbook companies often send out "examination copies" of textbooks, usually for free (some companies require the books be returned or paid for if they are not adopted), to entice profs to adopt them.

Usually, the books are not that useful to me. I don't have a heck of a lot of time to review many many books, two of the courses I teach have books chosen by a committee, and I am pretty well satisfied (& have chosen what is generally regarded as the "top of the line") for my other classes.

So I either give the books away to people going into teaching themselves, or I hang onto them and never use them, or I (feeling guilty because I know it jacks up the textbook prices) sell them to the textbook buyer who periodically comes through.

But today, my present: A brand-new copy of The World Beneath our Feet, a fabulous book on soil ecology and the critters that live in the soil.

This was a book I had considered buying for myself.

It has neat drawings and good brief descriptions of the critters in it. It is the kind of book that pleases my inner child, the little eight year old girl deep inside me who likes playing in the mud and who enjoys looking at isopods (woodlice, or roly-polies, or sow bugs, depending on where in the country you come from) and who isn't afraid of worms or bugs and who, rather than thinking them gross, thinks they're kinda cool.

And it features my favorite-common-named-animals of all time, the pleasing fungus beetle and the handsome fungus beetle.

I mean, how can you resist it: Pleasing. Fungus. Beetle. What a wonderful combination of words, and what a wonderful world we live in.