Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Thoreau on Credulity
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. –Henry David Thoreau, Walden [Among his many professions Thoreau could claim surveyor. Early in 1846, while he was living at Walden Pond, he surveyed it thoroughly, including measuring its depth. He related that he [...]
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Special Relativity: A First Reading List
A long-time friend of mine, quite inadvertently and perhaps to his lasting regret, brought up the subject of special relativity : we briefly touched on the idea central to special relativity that the speed of light (in vacuum) is constant (as measured) in every inertial reference frame.* At first hearing it's a rather unsettling idea, [...]
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2010 Science Book Challenge
Gosh, would you look at the date: December already! How time flies when one is enjoying reading some nonfiction books for the Science Book Challenge! Indeed, it's that time of year again (a little past, actually) when we announce the opening of our annual Science Book Challenge, this time for calendar year 2010. This is [...]
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Reading Louise Penny
My current bedtime mystery reading is A Rule Against Murder, by Louise Penny. Let's make that Canadian Louse Penny, for all my friends needing a suggestion for their Canadian Reading Challenge. Ms. Penny's books are set mostly in the village of Three Pines, Quebec, a village populated with the expected eccentric characters, some of whom [...]
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Read a Banned Book
Every year at this time we pour out a tall glass of apple cider and celebrate us some good reading, thanks to "Banned Book Week" and the American Library Association. Of course, it's not the attempts at book banning that we celebrate, but, as the ALA puts it, we are "celebrating the freedom to read". [...]
Share on FacebookOh! Those Poor, Poor Ligatures
Last week I was reading a novel — can't remember which one so its publisher will be spared the embarrassment — when I was distracted by ugly typesetting. The occasion was the author's use of the word "affiliated". There was a period, a brief dark ages of pseudo-typesetting. generally thought of vulgarly as "output", when [...]
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Still More Books
For those who might care* I thought I would mention that I've just updated my online "book of books", the database in which I keep a list of the books I've read.† I only seem to get to updating it once a year or so; therefore you'll find that I've added titles from about the [...]
Share on FacebookBeard of the Week LXXXII: Space-Time Expands
This week's beard belongs to* author John R. Gribbin (1946– ), a science writer who started life as an astrophysicist. (His website.) I've read and mentioned a few of his books here in the last year or so, and I've been enjoying them so far. The one that I most recently read and enjoyed is [...]
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15 Books
Tim Wilson made me do this at Facebook. I ended up with 16 because his list reminded me of a couple I'd neglected at first. Choose 15 at will. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more [...]
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On Reading Potter's You Are Here
Another book I read and enjoyed recently was by Christopher Potter: You Are Here : A Portable History of the Universe (New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2009; 194 pages). Here is my book note. Potter said he wanted to write the book he wanted to read but no one had ever written. Great idea! His saying [...]
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On Reading Fagan's The Long Summer
More! More! More books that I'm just getting around to writing about. Here's another one: Brian Fagan, The Long Summer : How Climate Changed Civilization (New York : Basic Books, 2004; xvii + 284 pages). I liked it. So far I've liked both books by Fagan that I read, and I expect I'll read more. [...]
Share on FacebookOn Reading A Life in Twilight
I am a big fan of J. Robert Oppenheimer and I like reading about him. I just wrote a book note about Mark Wolverton's A Life in Twilight : The Final Years of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York : St. Martin's Press, 2008; 339 pages). What an excellent book it was! (You can tell I [...]
Share on FacebookOn Reading The Age of Entanglement
Reading proceeds apace, but writing about the books seems to happen in big clumps. For instance, my book note on Louisa Gilder's The Age of Entanglement : When Quantum Physics was Reborn (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. xvi + 443 pages). Perhaps if I wrote less I could write sooner. Oddly, I didn't [...]
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On Reading Sun in a Bottle
Rather recently I enjoyed reading Charles Seife's Sun in a Bottle : The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking (New York : Viking, 2008; 294 pages). The subtitle is indicative, although I'm not sure just how strange the history of fusion is. Of course, what he means by "the history of [...]
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Science-Book Grab-Bag
I've been reading lots of good books this year, several that I can count for my own commitment to the Science-Book Challenge, but I am only now catching up on writing about them. Tonight I wanted to mention a trio of top-notch books from three different domains: cosmology, probability & statistics, and history of science [...]
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2009 Lammies: Finalists
The finalists for the Lambda Literary Foundation's 21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards have been announced. As their publicity notes, "this year 105 finalists representing 72 publishers are competing for awards in 22 categories." I wanted to draw your attention to these two finalists: Kinsey Zero through Sixty: Bisexual Perspectives on Kinsey. edited [...]
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On Reading The Little Ice Age
Earlier this year I read the book Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History 1300 – 1850, by Brian Fagan (New York : Basic Books, 2000; 246 pages). He takes a close look at the relatively cool period between the "Medieval Warm Period" and the current warming period, and considers in [...]
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A Murmuration
For a couple of months I kept track of a Language Log article about "talking" starlings (Mark Liberman, "Vocal mimicry on the web", Language Log, 1 November 2008), not so much for all the interesting scholarship on vocal mimicry contained therein, but because of the amusing video that reminded me of something, a tiny missed [...]
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Doing Some Twenty on Ninety
Recently I read Bunny Crumpacker's* Perfect Figures : The Lore of Numbers and How we Learned to Count (New York : St. Martin's Press, 2007, 271 pages). I never quite decided whether I liked it or not, but I rather enjoyed the reading of it. Mostly it was engaging, but the style took me a [...]
Share on FacebookDon't Forget the Ligatures!
This morning I was reading my current mystery book, David Handler's The Sour Cherry Surprise. I'm enjoying it. It's published by St. Martin's Minotaur (2008, 230 pages). Right now I need to have a brief word with the publisher. Typeface ligatures were invented for a reason. You have them at your disposal–use them! This morning [...]
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