As an antidote to studying Dante’s Comedy I am enjoying The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. It is very informative about clouds and the atmosphere while being written in a humorous style. His philosophy even echoes Zen in some respects as he says ‘watching clouds legitimises doing nothing.’ (However, it would be a mistake if readers unfamiliar with Zen thought that was all there is to Zen: I’m afraid the path of Zen is one of unfathonable psychological demands and by no means easy!) The author first set up The Cloudspotter’s Appreciation Society and only afterwards wrote the book. He describes how to recognise the different cloud families and peppers the text with amusing or interesting anecdotes inluding one about the pilot who ejected from a plane into a huge thunderstorm cloud and survived to tell the tale.
The picture shows a mackerel sky – or cirrocumulus stratiformis undulatus!
As light reading with lots of nuggets to chew on this could not be bettered; five stars out of five stars (or should that be 5 clouds?).
All Things Creative 