rcmnd

The Anatomist's ApprenticeBook

by Tessa Harris

Who uses, recommends or left The Anatomist's Apprentice, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who writes the long-running blog Three-Toed Sloth and the Bactra Review of books.
liked

Mind candy. I wanted to like a historical mystery about forensic pathology in the 1780s, but multiple characters referring to "bacteria", a surgeon unironically addressing common laborers as "gentlemen", and the whole plot hinging on a titled English estate not being entailed, led me to give up mentally fairly early on. I finished it because I had left myself without other reading matter on a long trip.

His monthly "Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur" post for November 2017 — the books he read that month and feels he can recommend.

2017-11-30·bactra.org ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.