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Everyone loves to check out other people's bookshelves. Here is mine for your perusal. This also gives me the perfect opportunity to share a bunch of my favorite writers and show off some of my favorite tchotchkes.

1. Starting with the musical instruments... this one is called an otamatone. Invented by the Japanese art unit, Maywa Denki, the otamatone is an electronic instrument played by running your fingers along a touch-sensitive strip on the stem. It creates a theremin-like glissando, to which you can then add a wah-wah effect by squeezing the mouth open. See it played in this video.

2. These knockmen wind-up toys are also by Maywa Denki. See them demonstrated here.

3. Last Last Chance by Fiona Maazel — her debut novel, about fun stuff like plagues, narcotics recovery, and reincarnation. So psyched for her next novel, Woke Up Lonely, which comes out in April.

4. Spinning choral top, given to me by Nelly Reifler. When the top gets going, it creates a beautifully disturbing series of minor chords. Nelly's beautifully disturbing collection of short stories, See Through, is also on the ...

Bored at work? Watch these videos. Maybe just turn down your volume a touch. There are certain things described in my book, Unusual Creatures, which you simply must see to believe. Here are a few of my favorites. Oh, and the last link is an audio clip. Needless to say, you will need to turn your volume up for that one.

The Jesus Christ lizard and its amazing ability to run on water.

The mimic octopus altering its shape, color, and even behavior to impersonate other creatures.

The amazingly disgusting amount of slime that a hagfish can make in just a few minutes.

The tardigrade, and how this microscopic creature is the toughest animal on the planet.

The anglerfish and its most-peculiar mating behavior.

A slow loris getting tickled. (Note: In no way do I promote owning a slow loris as a pet. But this, my friends, is very cute.)

The blue-footed booby and its fancy dance.

Super-rare footage of a long-eared jerboa.

A sea pig doing its thing.

The incredible ...

Manny lives just around the corner from me, in front of the big red building on Sixth Avenue. He's fearless and happy. I first noticed him when he was living on my block about two years ago. He would flop on the sun-drenched sidewalk, squinting his eyes at me and showing off his gray and black stripes. Each day, I would inch a little closer to him, testing the boundaries. Eventually I reached down to pet him, and he pushed his head back into my hand wanting more.

Although he has no collar and is clearly a street cat, Manny is more trusting than just about any cat I've ever met. Perhaps his trust comes from the endless supply of cat food left for him by passersby. One elderly man in particular — a long-bearded, thick-lensed retiree — seems to be responsible for most of his daily feedings. His name is Danny and he is a former postal worker who now spends much of his time walking to the grocery store and back, where he buys, among other things, cat food for Manny. One time I saw Danny ...

Any Camille Saint-Saëns fans out there? I've been asked many times why I wrote Unusual Creatures, and the answer is simple: The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. You should listen to it right now. It's a true masterpiece. And just look at his beard.

When I was in high school and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I listened to a lot of music. Not just bands like Pink Floyd, Oingo Boingo, and Led Zeppelin but also to classical music (mostly found in my stepfather's collection). A few stuck out more than others: Gustav Holst's The Planets, Philip Glass's Metamorphosis, Kronos Quartet's eponymous album (which contained their amazing version of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze"), and Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals. It's fairly safe to say that these recordings were a major part of why I decided to go to music school. I wanted to write music like that.

Hello Powell's blog readers! What an honor to be here. And to celebrate, I thought I would start with a recipe for wombat poop fudge. (Note: there is no actual wombat poop in this recipe.)

Last Thursday was the release party for my new book Unusual Creatures, and as a party favor, I thought it would be fun to supply the guests with wombat poop fudge. You see, wombats poop cubes — a fact I'm so fascinated by that I've even included a diagram of the poop in the book. Why does the wombat poop cubes? Simple: it uses its poop as a trail marker, and it doesn't want the marker to roll away. Duh!

So, here I set off to make a tasty treat that looks like the fecal matter of this short-legged Australian marsupial. Actually, I started with the idea to make wombat poop brownies. My first recipe was derived from Karen DeMasco's book The Craft of Baking. Unfortunately, as delicious as those brownies were, they didn't have the right consistency to mold into small cubes. Also, I'm not sure what sort of oven ...