Jenniskens’ Meteor Showers book in my mailbox!

I got my copy of Jenniskens’ book today… Wow, it is a thick one! As far as I can say, a very nice compendium of the physics of meteor showers and a necessary observing handbook.

I will offer a review here as soon as I go through the 790 pages of the volume. What I can say so far is that it is well-bound, thick with plots, tables, and nice pictures, plus a lot of useful data, and boy does it smell good!

Indeed, one of the first things I do if I am alone with a new book is to smell it… I think it goes back to my childhood days, when I was introduced to the smell of freshly printed books and magazines as I visited printing houses with my father. But I know I am not alone! I remember one afternoon at Borders in downtown Chicago, when Alberto Ribon and I had to buy a book on C++, and the only meaningful criterion to choose among the hundred or so possibilities seemed the smell of the pages, other things being harder to judge…