Crickets and Grasshoppers

Crickets and grasshoppers look rather similar,
Both found in meadows while jumping around,
But crickets are smaller and blacker on average,
Though they can both come in green or in brown.

Crickets make noise when their wings rub together,
While grasshoppers rub with a leg on a wing.
Their females may chirp in response to the males,
If less often, while she-crickets can’t ever sing.

A grasshopper’s diet is purely herbivorous,
Feasting on plant stems and flowers and seeds.
A cricket eats all that plus fruit and bug larvae
And aphids to meets its omnivorous needs.

The cricket’s antennae are longer and wispier.
Sometimes they’re used in a fight for a mate.
It’s active at nighttime in contrast with grasshoppers.
That’s how you know which you hear when it’s late.

The average cricket lives 8 to 10 weeks,
While a grasshopper’s lifespan goes up to a year.
They jump a bit farther and come in more species.
That’s plenty of differences; guess I’ll stop here.

Book Review: City of Stairs

No, it has no connection with The City of Brass. This Robert Jackson Bennett fantasy takes place in a world with a very different geography and history, tho the character and place names evoke Eastern Europe, South Asia, and a little Scandinavia. This edition does not include a map. The date is sometime in the 18th century, but there's a smattering of technology from later eras of reality, including a possible future.

( Cut for length )

I also read Unicornucopia: The Little Book of Unicorns, but that's too little for more than a paragraph's review. Most pages have just a few sentences telling facts about cultural perceptions of unicorns across time and space, accompanied by cutesy drawings. There's a huge uptick in text when it gets to rainbow food recipes and dubious "spells" to brighten your day, but at that point, I just looked at the illustrations, which had gotten repetitive. Unless you're already a huge fan of the topic, I don't recommend buying that book. (I found it on a giveaway shelf, and now I've put it on one.)

My next novel: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. This also has a religious theme, but it doesn't look very similar.