Murder by Death

This has been a slow read for me, through no fault of the book's, and in spite of my tortoise speed, I'm enjoying it.  It's not edge-of-your-seat stuff, exactly, and the humor... well, I've liked some of the jokes, but I couldn't help thinking at the beginning, 'the jokes feel like a British person trying to make American jokes'.  After a few more jokes falling flat, and the section that contained the dead giveaway reference to a cat as a "moggy", I flipped to the back flap for the author bios, and both are citizens of the realm.  Doesn't mean I'm right about the humor, but it does illustrate the disconnect I felt; few Americans can pull off the brilliant dryness of British humor, and at least in this case, for me, the authors struggle with pulling off the sassier style of humor we Yanks are known for.

I've just finished up reading about the Pond Skaters, and I am forever going to hear Pull! in my head now every time I see one whizzing across the surface of the water, with their tiny middle legs acting like oars.

I loved the section on the geckos.  While I understood on a basic level how they walked on ceilings before, the authors did a thoroughly complete job of explaining the phenomenon to me on the molecular scale.  All those tee tiny hairs...  And I love the irony of their inability to walk on dry teflon, but wet teflon is fine.  I also now desperately need to hear a tokay gecko bark.  None of this YouTube stuff; I want to hear a gecko bark in the wild.  

The Harlequin Shrimp is a badass.  If you haven't seen the YouTube video called True Facts, and you like your science irreverent (and often not suitable for children or work environments), I highly, highly recommend looking it up.  It's not only hilarious, but offers a great slow motion / freeze frame shot of the cavitation bubble that Harlequin shrimp produce when they punch things.

Totally irrelevant aside:  if I ever had a 'pet' Harlequin shrimp, I would name it Spot.  Because I can only imagine that the percentage of "Rocky", "Ali", "George Foreman", etc. shrimp would be in the 90th percentile.  Why zig when you can zag?