Thanks BrianR for hosting Michael and reviewing his excellent and absorbing book.

I follow Michael’s blog often and enjoy how his main subject links into other tangential areas of science and culture. Thanks also for your excellent blog and the time and effort you put into it just as Michael does.

Thanks Michael for writing Sand, The Neverending Story(neverending stories are the intregal depth,beauty, inspiration and fascination of science!) and for being part of the professional quality output that make up much of the geo-blogosphere.

I guess that when I thought about audiences, first and foremost, I wanted the book to be enjoyed by anyone who might be interested, whether geologist, possible geologist, or an enthusiastic, non-specialist; most of all, I wanted all these readers to be surprised. I found the idea of a book about something as apparantly mundane as sand deliciously subversive – if only I could get the audience to read it. I took great pleasure from starting the book with a love story.

With all this in mind, I realised that, if I could explain an interesting idea, an intriguing bit of geology in a way and in words that were accessible to anyone, then “anyone” included geologists and non-specialists alike – there is no need for jargon and technical terminology, these are stories and I set out to tell them like stories. The need for some kind of conscious balance therefore vanished – geologists can put in their own terminology if they wish, but the story’s already there.

This was a huge, but very enjoyable, challenge – enjoyable because science is exciting and that excitement provides all the ingredients of a good story if you can work out how to tell it. I look back at the book with mixed feelings – there are parts I would like to re-work, but I have to admit that there are many parts that I’m honestly pleased with. I hope that that comes across in reading the book.

On thinking about it, I guess I also felt that if the connections could be made in both directions between the science, the wonders of our planet, and our daily lives and our imaginations, then this would provide a narrative and interest for specialist and non-specialist audiences.

So I learned a lot in the process (not just about sand). And any future book will, I hope, use what I learned to improve, without leaning more in either direction. And I find my blog a great opportunity to practise!

But I seem to have rambled on a bit……

I love the idea of a book on sand, but as a fluvial geomorphologist I can’t help but be struck by the fact that in river systems, sand is very often mixed with gravel or finer sediments in the bed and banks. How did you talk about the relationships and interactions with bigger and littler grains in your book? As someone partial to gravel-bed rivers, I’ll admit to hoping that you didn’t completely leave out the big guys.

Once you get beyond the rounded and frosted versus angular and fresh-faced diagnosis, the symptoms become pretty subtle. David Krinsley’s 1973 “Atlas of quartz sand surface textures” was the pioneering work using scanning electron microscopy, followed in 2002 by William Mahaney’s classic “Atlas of of Sand Grain Surface Textures and Applications.” This field of grain provenance and transport history diagnostics has become extremely sophisticated – and I’m afraid I’m no expert!

(2) An interesting question! This being my first venture into the world of publishing, it’s been a steep learning curve and I have a long way to go. The whole business end (contract, permissions, rights and so on) is complex and explicitly distinguishes between hardback and paperback print editions and print and electronic editions. I honestly don’t know how the process of getting a book on to kindle works – but, thanks for the question and I’ll certainly try to find out!