Speaker’s Book

• The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, by Susan Orlean

David Attenborough & the Carnivorous Plant of DOOM!

Print:

• Carnivorous Plants and Their Habitats, by Stewart McPherson
• Insectivorous Plants, by Charles Darwin (1875, D. Appleton and Company) – Biodiversity Heritage Library

Online:

• “Nepenthes attenboroughii A new species of giant pitcher plant from the Philippines” – Stewart McPherson
• “A Spectacular New Species of Nepenthes L. (Nepenthaceae) Pitcher Plant from Central Palawan, Philippines” – Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBhjkBUec-4

Synesthesia: When Colors Taste Like Sounds

Print:

• Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
• Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel, by Jason Padgett, Maureen Ann Seaberg
• Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math, by Daniel Tammet

Ambergris: The Surprising Origins of a Rare Perfume

Print:

• Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, by Christopher Kemp
• Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, by Herman Melville

Online:

• Something Indescribably Elemental: A History of Ambergris, by Jennie Erin Smith
• “The Origin of Ambergris” – Latin American Journal of Aquatic Mammals
• “Floating Gold: The Romance of Ambergris”– National History Magazine
• “A Complete History of Food, with Ambergris” – Caroline’s Miscellany
• “Strange but True: Whale Waste Is Extremely Valuable” – Scientific American
• “Ambergris Update (Modified from Monograph in Natural Aromatic Materials – Odours and Origins by Tony Burfield)” -Crop Watch 

Extraordinary Conservation Measures: How We Almost Lost the California Condor

Print:

• Introduction to the California Condor, by Noel Snyder & Helen Snyder
• Return of the Condor: The Race to Save our Largest Bird from Extinction, by John Moir
• Condor Journal: The History, Mythology, and Reality of the California Condor, by Dick Smith

Online:

• “What Does a Condor Look Like?” – Condor Tales
• “Puppet Parents Raise Troubled Condors” – Nature Publishing Group
• Live Condor Cams – Ventana Wildlife Society

 Bagels, Lox & the Beastie Boys: Yiddish as We Know It

Print:

•  The New Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten
• The Meaning of Yiddish, by Benjamin Harshav
• What Must Be Forgotten: The Survival of Yiddish in Zionist Palestine, by Yael Chaver

Online:

• Funky Donky Lyrics – Beastie Boys
• “Endangered Languages” – Ethnologue

The Curse of the Black Opal

Print:

• Precious Stones: for Curative Wear: And Other Remedial Uses: Likewise the Nobler Metals, by William Thomas Fernie (1907, John Wright & Co. – out of print) on Archive.org
• Anne of Geierstein, by Walter Scott
• The World of Opals, by Allan W. Eckert

Online:

• “Are Opals Bad Luck?” – Opals Down Under
• Coober Pedy: Opal Capital of the World – District Council of Coober Pedy
• Digital Pictures Collections: Coober Pedy South Australia – National Library of Autralia

For each salon, we invite our speakers to share the resources and interesting reading they came across in researching their talk, so that we can all dig more deeply. This reading list was compiled by Odd Salon with Kelly Jensen, Rachael Van Schoik, Frederic Lightning Leist, Isolde Honore, Lilia Gutnik, and Todd Barrett. Thank you!