TWO books I've come across recently thattuv reminded me STRONGLY of CAS...

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, Theodore Gray

The text is too breezy/colloquial to be reminiscent of CAS, but the subject is another matter... Gray is essentially writing potted, illustrated biographies of all the elements, from the everyday to the über-exotic. All that beauty and strangeness, and (sometimes) DANGER and disturbingness, from the combination of just THREE basic building-blocks: protons, neutrons and electrons. Gold, hydrogen, plutonium, neon, astatine, sodium... they're the SAME under the skin, but SOOOOO different ABOVE it... It reminds me of what CAS did with the 26 letters of the alphabet.....

And if CAS himself were an element...? Difficult to say, but one possibility is technetium: it's WEIRD... a radioactive anomaly, given its position in the periodic table.

Final thought... It's not a book I could ever imagine bee-yun written by a woman or being enjoyed by many women. The combination of high intelligence and obsession-with/love-for the material/inorganic just doesn't happen offn enuff among the female community.....

Post-final thought... Beautiful book, mind-expanding subject: a CASsic text!

The Amazing World of Orchids: A Practical Guide to Selection and Cultivation, Wilma and Brian Rittershausen

Orchids seem to me to be THE CASean flower: beautiful, strange and complex, appealing to both the mind and the senses. And with an eroto-undertone: I couldn't help but think of PU-- uh, nah, can't say that on the ED forum..... 'Nother attempt: I couldn't help but think of PUDENDA (♀) at points in this book: the hirsuteness and the HUES... AnthoGYNæcophile porNOGraphy, eny-1?... And the N A M E S... Phragmipedium... Cymbidium... Coelogyne... Gongora galeata... Miltoniopsis vexillaria... Phalaenopsis pulcherrima...

You could get DRUNK on them...

Final thought... definitely a book you can imagine being written BY a wombyn and FOR wombynn.

Post-final thought... I remember reading another book about orchids (can't remember title or author, unfortunately) saying that orchidophiles were often strange and obsessive people... Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.....

Post-post-final thought... Beautiful book, mind-expanding, sense-stirring subject: a CASsic text!