A "spring cleaning my bookshelf" release.

What a nice treat, received in a surprise box full of books. I'm going to bring it to our minimeetup this morning.

RELEASE NOTES:

sending off to MaryZee's obcz for some traveling

Received in a box from VraciousRdr for the OBCZ. Thanks!

Finished reading this a few days ago. I've now read 2 books by Petroski - the other one was The Evolution of Useful Things. I may have preferred that one just a bit more over The Pencil - there was quite a variety of artifacts included there.

This book includes a lot of history, from the beginning of the discovery of plumbago (graphite)in England up to modern times and the creation of quite a variety of various types of pencils. Petroski's books seem to be written from the point-of-view of an engineer or inventor, which I find to be somewhat interesting, but perhaps not as much as some others might. I was interested to learn that HD Thoreau was a pencil manufacturer.

Lots of interesting info here, moreso than what you might expect for an artifact that we all take for granted every day. I don't think I'll ever look at a pencil quite the same way - I learned lots of interesting tidbits in this book.

This will be going into my "Books about Things" bookbox. Thanks for sharing, Bikewmn and VraciousRdr.

RELEASE NOTES:

Putting into my "Books about Things" bookbox.

chosen from the Books About Things bookbox