Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Clouds by Eric M. Wilcox.

Clouds by Eric M. Wilcox.  Hardcover book (with pictorial boards) published by Duncan Baird Publishers 2008, 176 pages with colour photographs throughout.


The title says it all.  It’s a book about clouds.  Fortunately the author has avoided using too much text and has instead filled the pages with awesome pictures of… you guessed it… clouds.  There is some text but unlike the geography classes that I sat through in the early 1980s where I learnt the meaning of the words boring and tedious whilst a teacher moaned on and on (and on) about cumulus, stratus and cirrus, this book has a wonderful balance of pretty pictures and text that are both educational and aesthetically pleasing.  I get the feeling that if I actually read “Clouds”, I could learn something.  

“This irresistible book, with a chapter for each of the ten major cloud types, combines science with beauty, presenting approximately 100 superb cloud photographs, with explanatory captions. An enjoyable introduction delivers fascinating snippets of mythology and weather lore; while a 24-page scientific overview at the back of the book, fully illustrated with informative colour artworks, explains how to recognize the different cloud types and understand their significance for the weather Studying clouds, we learn, is like reading someone’s face: a cloud is simply the atmosphere expressing its mood.”  

I guess it was the photographs that attracted me to this book.  You can’t really go wrong with pretty pictures of fluffy things floating in the air (…this excludes cats).  As you’ve probably gathered, my knowledge of clouds is minimal, yet I can appreciate the beauty of an Altocumulus as I’m sure most of us have at some stage in our lives.  
  
Altocumulus 

So if you’ve ever wondered what is a Stratus or a Cirrocumulus, or if you’ve ever wanted to differentiate between Cirrus and Altocumulus… or if you really want to know what that teacher was waffling on about for all those weeks back in the early 1980s… or even if you like pictures of fluffy things (excluding cats)... then this is possibly the book for you. 

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