Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
A Scienticity Reading List
A friend asked me for some recommendations for popular science books she might read. Here is one such list. It is 16 titles I culled from the "Top-Rated Books" [link] in the Scienticity Book-Note Collection of books that I have read and found enjoyable, informative, and memorable. Most of the notes in the links are […]
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook, Speaking of Science
On Not Finishing Kaku's "Physics of the Impossible"
I read a lot of popular-science books. You know I do this partly to support the Science Booknotes and Science Book Challenge projects at Scienticity. I often remark to myself how thoroughly I enjoyed a book that I chose arbitrarily at my library, maybe because the title appealed to me or the book spine was […]
In: All, Books, Explaining Things, Speaking of Science
Beard on Salads
Tonight I was thumbing through James Beard's American Cookery (1972, in a reissued edition), and noted these two remarks on the subject of salads. [from page 34] When a Pennsylvania housewife won a national prize for a jellied salad in 1905, she unleashed a demand for congealed salads that has grown alarmingly, particularly in the […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Food Stuff
Ricks on Bergen on Bush
Bergen[, in his book The Longest War,] is evenhanded but ferocious in reviewing the failures of the Bush administration, noting that in the wake of the worst security failure in American history, no one was fired, no one resigned and no one took responsibility. It’s widely understood that the White House ceded the moral high […]
Selecting a Popular-Science Book to Read
Recently I was contemplating answers to potential questions prior to a brief interview (I'll give a link if it shows up someplace linkable) I gave about our Science Book Challenge. One question that came to mind, one for which we try to provide one answer with our collection of science-book notes, is "How do I […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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 […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Plus Ca Change...
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, […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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 […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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 […]
In: All, Books, Laughing Matters
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". […]
Oh! 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 […]
In: All, Books, Feeling Peevish
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 […]
Beard 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 […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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 […]
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook
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 […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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. […]
On 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 […]
On 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 […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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 […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
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 […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science