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Richard’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Richard’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Richard Conniff’s Followers (81)
354 books
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460 friends
41 books
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183 friends
128 books
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158 friends
66 books
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14 friends
119 books
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138 friends
1,379 books
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439 friends
295 books
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124 friends
31 books
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59 friends
More friends…
Richard Conniff
Goodreads Author
Born
Jersey City, NJ, The United States
Member Since
May 2012
How to Get Bitten by a Black Mamba
Plan carefully and keep your camera close at hand.
by Richard Conniff12–15 minutes
A black mamba sinks its fangs into the photographer. (Photo: Mark Laita)With apologies to readers who have already seen this piece on my substack, I want to reprint it here because the original account appeared on Strange Behaviors 12 years ago, and left behind a frustrating mystery. Here the mystery gets belatedl
Read more of this blog post »
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The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth
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published
2010
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13 editions
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The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide
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published
2002
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15 editions
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Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals
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published
2009
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8 editions
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Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World
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published
1996
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13 editions
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The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights and Work Smarter by Understanding Human Nature
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published
2005
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20 editions
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Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife
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published
1998
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8 editions
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House of Lost Worlds: Dinosaurs, Dynasties, and the Story of Life on Earth
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published
2016
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4 editions
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Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion
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published
2023
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7 editions
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Rats! The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
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published
2002
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9 editions
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The Devil's Book of Verse: Masters of the Poison Pen from Ancient Times to the Present Day
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published
1983
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2 editions
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Richard’s Recent Updates
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Richard Conniff
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Richard
rated a book did not like it
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| A beach read romance set in a Nazi death camp is a truly horrible idea. The writing is artless and the characters are very thin cardboard. We get no sense of who Gita is, other than that she is young and beautiful, and not much more about Lale Sokolo ...more | |
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| I read this one because Everett's later novel James was so good, and also because "American Fiction," the movie based on this book was likewise very good. But the book disappointed because it felt so scattered, part the erasure of the title--about th ...more | |
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Richard
rated a book really liked it
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| Early on, we are warned against people who read certain books mainly to seem clever. So I confess that I re-read this book, after many decades, mainly to seem clever. I suspect that C.S. Lewis also wrote it to seem clever. I enjoyed his many insights ...more | |
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rated a book liked it
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
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Richard
rated a book liked it
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Richard
rated a book really liked it
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| Early on, we are warned against people who read certain books mainly to seem clever. So I confess that I re-read this book, after many decades, mainly to seem clever. I suspect that C.S. Lewis also wrote it to seem clever. I enjoyed his many insights ...more | |
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Richard
rated a book it was ok
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| Trivial. A story about a divorced 40-something woman's fantasy life (MILF world, dabbles in lesbianism), with most of her fantasies unfulfilled, and her college-age dirtbag, lacrosse-playing son who seriously misunderstands college-age women, and is ...more | |
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Richard
rated a book really liked it
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| The first half of the book consists of stories that seem to be related only by taking place in New York City a long time ago: A Russian peasant who comes to America by a series of strokes of astonishing good luck, a young would-be writer with nothing ...more | |
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Richard
rated a book liked it
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| A smart young girl's growth into her adult life, as her scholarly parents' marriage turns out to be a lie (at least on her father's side). Detailed and perceptive about the lives of young girls, but maybe too much so for me. The book ends abruptly on ...more | |
“Once randomly aggressive behavior gets started in an organization, it tends to be contagious, rapidly spreading itself because of a built-in mammalian device for relieving stress, called redirected aggression. Stanford physiologist Robert Sapolsky describes it this way:“Numerous psychoendocrine studies show that in a stressful or frustrating circumstance, the magnitude of the subsequent stress-response is decreased if the organism is provided with an outlet for frustration. For example, the [glucocorticoid] secretion triggered by electric shock in a rat is diminished if the rat is provided with a bar of wood to gnaw on, a running wheel, or, as one of the most effective outlets, access to another rat to bite.”
― The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights and Work Smarter by Understanding Human Nature
― The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights and Work Smarter by Understanding Human Nature
“Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what’s weird, different, other, but to a world where we humans do not matter nearly as much as we like to think.
And that should be enough.”
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And that should be enough.”
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Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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The Seasonal Read...:
WINTER CHALLENGE 2009-2010 COMPLETED TASKS
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3143 | 3261 | Feb 28, 2010 09:02PM | |
| You'll love this ...: Sara's Low-Octane Alphabet Quest | 27 | 84 | Mar 22, 2013 07:04AM | |
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The Seasonal Read...:
Winter Challenge 2013: Completed Tasks (Do Not Delete Posts)
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2478 | 651 | Feb 28, 2014 09:00PM | |
| The History Book ...: ARCHIVE - SPOILER THREAD - SEPTEMBER - GLOSSARY - THE SIXTH EXTINCTION | 22 | 50 | Sep 17, 2015 10:04AM | |
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You'll love this ...:
New Purchases - 2015
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1215 | 204 | Dec 31, 2015 11:57AM | |
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The Seasonal Read...:
Spring Challenge 2016: Completed Tasks:PLEASE DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS THREAD
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2923 | 526 | May 31, 2016 09:02PM | |
| Nothing But Readi...: Ashley's Reading Challenges | 165 | 212 | Jan 07, 2019 05:11PM | |
| The Book Vipers: * Last book(s) you acquired | 1293 | 509 | Jan 29, 2020 10:25AM | |
| Nothing But Readi...: To-Read Weight Loss Challenge | 133 | 1009 | Apr 24, 2024 02:53PM |
