I’ve been meaning to review or at least mention the books I’ve been reading lately. I realized after I posted my negative review of Infinite Ascent that there are plenty of good books that I haven’t mentioned. So, here are capsule reviews of five books I’ve read recently–all picked up at either the remainder table at Half Price Books, or the bargain table at the big box retailer in the local mega shopping center.
Mario Livio’s The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number is an engaging story. The book begins with a brief history of early arithmetic before diving into the discovery of and usefulness of what has become known as The Golden Ratio. From its first use in constructing pentagrams and the Platonic solids, to its uncanny appearance in nature, Livio shows the significance of the number 1.6180339…–the number that satisfies the equality: x2 – x = 1. Perhaps just as importantly, he debunks many myths about the Golden Ratio and its supposed mystical properties. Altogether a delightful read, and one that I recommend highly.
I’ve always been curious about how words come into being, how they change meanings, and how they eventually fall out of favor. I’m not a huge word nerd (and I mean that in the best possible way) like some of my friends, but I do enjoy learning about them. In The Life of Language: The fascinating ways words are born, live & die, authors Sol Steinmetz and Barbara Ann Kipfer take us on a tour through the English language, describing the many different ways words come into the language and how their pronunciations and meanings change over time. They also explain how to read the etymological information found in dictionaries–something my high school and college English teachers never bothered to teach. If they even knew. The writing style is a little bit dry in places, and the book is probably a third larger than it really has to be, but I quite enjoyed the read.
Who would have thought that jigsaw puzzles had such a rich history. Did you know that there are manufacturers of custom jigsaw puzzles that cost $5.00 or more per piece? People will pay $2,500 for a high quality wooden jigsaw puzzle of 500 pieces. I always thought that a jigsaw puzzle was little more than a trinket–something to pass the time. Anne D. Williams’ The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History opened my eyes to a whole new world of jigsaw puzzles, puzzle collectors and enthusiasts, and custom manufacturers. I’m not a huge jigsaw puzzle fan, but it was kind of interesting learning about this particular obsession that’s shared by a surprising number of people. Well written and mostly engaging, it was a good way to pass a few hours.
It’s hard to characterize Dava Sobel’s The Planets. It’s a tour of all the planets in our solar system, plus the Sun and Earth’s Moon, and including the recently demoted Pluto. The “tour” is somewhat superficial in that it doesn’t go into a whole lot of detail about any of the planets, but it does give the basic facts: size, distance from the Sun, orbital period, etc. For the planets known to the ancients, we learn how they were viewed throughout history. She also describes how the moons of other planets were discovered, and gives us some history of the discovery of Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and many other objects. It’s a light read, well written and enjoyable.
I have to include one stinker in the list. I don’t know what possessed me to buy Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization’s End, by Lawrence E. Joseph, and I can’t give a real good reason why I actually read it. But I’m kind of glad I did. Not because I believe the “prophecies” of doom, but because it’s such a fascinating mix of superstition, science, faulty reasoning, and plain old scare mongering. Looked at critically, the arguments just don’t hold water: there’s nothing there. But the bullshit is so skillfully disguised and beautifully rendered that the book is hard to put down. I was just amazed at how well the author was able to weave the story together. He didn’t do a perfect job, though. In several places I got the distinct impression that he was laughing his ass off as he wrote. It’s impossible that the person who wrote this book actually believes what he’s peddling. I won’t recommend the book as anything but an interesting and somewhat amusing study in pandering to a deluded audience. At that, it succeeds brilliantly.