PLAIN AND FANCY SCIENCE
Sir-I realise that book reviewers cannot select their books as most reasonable adults do; but I do not~ think it wise that they should lose sight of
the fact that readers do select. According to the review "Plain and Fancy Science," the only difference between the two books was the manner of presentation. Now astronomy doesn’t interest me in the least. I can find S, by the Southern Cross and the pointers and I know the Pleiades. I take a friendly interest in Orion because on autumn nights he peeps in at my kitchen wincow while I wash the dishes and on winter mornings he sprawls drunkenly across the Eastern sky often in company with a dishevelled moon; but much I have read and heard about astronomy I_ don’t believe. Therefore, if Peattie had written. The Heavens Above I should not have read it, nor if Bowles or Kingdon Ward had. But if J. B. Sidgwick had written Flowering Earth I should have read it. From the review of Flowering Earth I imagine that J.D. McD. is not particularly interested in plant life, and I am afraid he may have turned away prospective readers. About 1942 I read the book and it was an adventure, helping as it did to form certain scrappy knowledge I had into a coherent whole and giving me a perspective. The purple patches did not worry me because I was used to American literature and they all bore references to things I liked to be reminded of. I have read the book several times since. Where your reviewer has fallen down for me is that I had been told that some of Peattie’s botanical statements were not facts. I had not through my ignorance been, able’ to verify whether this was so. Naturally then in a new review I expeeted to hear some other person’s opinion on the sub~ject. Again I’ve been let down
"DISAPPOINTED"
(Dunedin).
(Our reviewer makes this reply: ‘The whole point of the review was the difficulty in getting at Dr. Peattie’s facts. Because I am intensely interested in plant life, I was disappointed too.’’--Ed.)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19480910.2.14.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 5
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357PLAIN AND FANCY SCIENCE New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 5
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