I don't know how to respond to your post, so I'll just agree that my classes are terrific. In fact, I'm the greatest teacher of all time. Just imagine coming into a hot classroom at 8 in the morning. Now imagine that a puffy white guy with a country accent comes into the room, starts pacing back and forth in front of a whiteboard, blathering on for 90 minutes about how diffusion is the least appreciated force in nature, or that we should all be grateful for our respective pancreata. On the screen above his head are some blurry diagrams of the Krebs Cycle. Did I mention it's hot? The puffy white guy pauses to take a sip of iced tea, then throws you out of the classroom for texting.

Welcome to the joys of higher education!

I haven't read Life List yet, but it's on the stack. I just finished rereading The Selfish Gene for a class I'm teaching in the spring, and I'm in the middle of a book on Alaskan mammals that I promised to review. I also accidentally picked up The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan, but it's short, and I'm reading it in little snatches. Next up is a book that a friend of mine wrote that I've been promising to get to for six months.