Poor Richard’s Books suggests titles built around the moon, a gun and mammoths

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Poor Richard’s Books in Colorado Springs recommends titles built around the moon, an inherited gun and resurrection of the wooly mammoth.

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From the publisher: Many of us know that the Moon pulls on our oceans, driving the tides, but did you know that it smells like gunpowder? Or that it was essential to the development of science and religion? Acclaimed journalist Rebecca Boyle takes readers on a dazzling tour to reveal the intimate role that our 4.51-billion-year-old companion has played in our biological and cultural evolution.

Our Moon’s gravity stabilized Earth’s orbit — and its climate. It drew nutrients to the surface of the primordial ocean, where they fostered the evolution of complex life. The Moon continues to influence animal migration and reproduction, plants’ movements, and, possibly, the flow of the very blood in our veins.

From Jeffery Payne, assistant retail manager: Rebecca Boyle’s remarkable gift of breaking down lunar science and history into digestible bite-size, easy-to-understand pieces is incredible! Combining captivating prose with a wealth of knowledge, she shares the likely beginning of the moon (synestia anyone?) and gently explains just how inseparable the Earth and moon really are.

As this past week shows, the moon affects our daily lives. Coastal communities rely on tidal knowledge and timing, ancient civilizations revered the different phases of the nighttime celestial orb, Christians the world over celebrate Easter — ever a moving date based on the timing of the full moon — and just look up the origins of the word “lunatic.” We cannot get away from just how important the moon is to our lives.

“Our Moon” is an engaging exploration of our nearest astral neighbor, and more than once you will say to yourself, “Well, I never knew that” when you read this fascinating book.

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From the publisher: Bryce Andrews was raised to do no harm. The son of a pacifist and conscientious objector, he moved from Seattle to Montana to tend livestock and the land as a cowboy. For a decade, he was happy. Yet, when Andrews inherited his grandfather’s Smith & Wesson revolver, he felt the weight of the violence braided into his chosen life. Other white men who’d come before him had turned firearms like this one against wildlife, wilderness, and the Indigenous peoples who had lived in these landscapes for millennia.

“Holding Fire” is a deeply felt memoir of one Western heart’s wild growth, and a personal testament to how things that seem permanent — inheritance, legacies of violence, forged steel — can change.

From Jeffery Payne, assistant retail manager: “All guns are made for killing, but a handgun chambered in .357 Magnum has a yet more specific purpose. It wasn’t invented to kill deer or ducks…. This thing I carry is built for killing people.”

“Holding Fire” is more than a narrative about the meaning, familial past and transformation of a particular gun, it is a journal of a skilled rancher and hunter who has carried the weight (in all respects of the word) of having such a weapon nearby.

Andrews deftly blends the complicated, often brutal story of (white) men as they shoved their way into the West and his own personal conflict of once finding reassurance in having a weapon in hand. His sincere introspection helps us appreciate how challenging it is to balance traditions, ideas and living in the West.

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From the publisher: Erebus Resort, occupying a magnificent, hundred-thousand acre valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths in their native habitat, brought back from extinction through the magic of genetic manipulation. When a billionaire’s son and his new wife are kidnapped and murdered in the Erebus back country by what is assumed to be a gang of eco-terrorists, Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Frances Cash partners with county sheriff James Colcord to track down the perpetrators.

As killings mount and the valley is evacuated, Cash and Colcord must confront an ancient, intelligent, and malevolent presence at Erebus, bent not on resurrection — but extinction.

From Jeffery Payne, assistant retail manager: Douglas Preston once again brings his well-crafted writing to his upcoming release (I managed to get an advance copy!). Masterfully mixing fast-paced adventure and intrigue, we are presented with an enticing story that blurs today’s science with the age-old question, “Just because we can, should we?”

It’s so persuasive an idea that the reader is left with a nagging feeling that the unthinkable is possible and we just might regret how fast technology is moving forward. Cloning dinosaurs is one thing, but what if we tried resurrecting something more sophisticated?

Type of Story: Review

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