This seems to be the best thread title to go with on reporting which books
I've read recently.
In January, I read the following:
_Debt of Honor_, by Tom Clancy
If you like Clancy, this one was good. I liked it better than _The Sum Of
All Fears_. If you've read something else by Clancy and not enjoyed it,
you probably won't like this one, either.
_"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman
I loved this. It's a collection of stories about Feynman's life, from his
point of view, plus a few things published previously elsewhere. The guy
was quite a character, and pulled some audacious stunts at various times.
One of the stories I enjoyed a lot was about him going to Las Vegas and
talking with Jimmy the Greek, finding out just how Jimmy the Greek made
money in the casinos. I also liked the story about safecracking at Los
Alamos. (If you see problems with security somewhere, *demonstrate* the
problem, right?)
_An Anthropologist on Mars_ by Oliver Sacks
I really like reading Oliver Sacks. This book is a collection of 7 (at
least, IIRC it was 7) essays on particular problems and how those with
them have managed to lead their lives using them as strengths and not
weaknesses. This includes the story that the movie "At First Sight" was
based on (somewhat loosely), and a wonderful account of a surgeon who has
Tourette's Syndrome. Sacks is fascinated by the human brain/mind, and
what can go wrong with it, and I get a good "wow" sort of feeling from
some of the stuff he writes.
_On the Banks of the Bayou_ by Roger Lea MacBride
This is the 7th book in a series about Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of
Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was weaker (and somewhat shorter) than the
previous ones, mostly due to the fact that MacBride died before he'd
written the final draft of this one. There was more "telling" rather than
"showing" than in the earlier books. I wouldn't recommend it unless you
were already reading the series and wanted to know What Happened Next.
_The Ancient Engineers_ by L. Sprague de Camp
This is a readable and informative account of the history of engineering,
up to da Vinci. I enjoyed it. Awhile back, I gave a copy to my
brother-in-law, having heard good things about it, and having read it now,
I made the right choice in doing so. He's not that interested in SF, but
very interested in some kinds of non-fiction, so I figure it's good all
around if I can give him non-fiction written by SF authors.
_The Day the Universe Changed_ by James Burke
I like James Burke -- not as much as I like Oliver Sacks or Stephen Jay
Gould, but I like him. This book didn't tie things up as neatly as
_Connections_ did, but it gave me plenty to think about. Reading this
just after _The Ancient Engineers_ gave me a slightly different
perspective on a few of the same things. The illustrations were
wonderful, and made the book a lot more enjoyable than it might otherwise
have been.
_Eight Little Piggies_ by Stephen Jay Gould
This is one of Gould's collections of essays, which I find to be fun
reading. If you like Gould and you haven't read this collection, I think
you'll enjoy it. If you haven't read any Gould, I'd recommend you go to a
library, find one of his collections of essays (as opposed to one of his
books on one big topic), read three of them from different sections (he
tends to group them thematically in the books), and if you enjoy those,
read more. I think my favorite essay was the one that touched on the
chirality of the periwinkle snail.
_The Whole Shebang_ by Timothy Ferris
This is a reasonably accessable book on cosmology. I enjoyed it, although
I had met a lot of the material previously in other places. He tries not
to color the whole book with his own opinions; he saves those for the
afterward, and while I don't agree with all of them, I liked the way he
presented them, after presenting the material to let his readers form
their own opinions.
_Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers_ by Jan Gullberg
If you want to know about mathematics without getting into too much of the
philosophical stuff that some books (e.g., _The Mathematical Experience_)
goes into, this is a great book. Unfortunately, it wasn't proofread as
well as it ought to have been, so if you're working through the problems
presented, and there's a discrepancy between what you're doing and what's
in the book, there's a decent chance that the book is wrong. It still
gives a good, non-philosophical answer to the question, "What is
mathematics?" I particularly enjoyed the chapter on fractals.
_Jumpstart: A Love Story_ by Robb Armstrong
Jumpstart is one of my favorite comics in the daily paper, and this is a
great collection of strips from before Sunny was born. They're not
organized strictly chronologically, but if you can handle that, this is a
great collection. It's also fairly thick (over 200 pages), so it'll keep
you entertained for a reasonable amount of time.
I hope this is reasonably informative. Right now, I'm in the middle of
another Clancy book (_Executive Orders_) and a Forgotten Realms book that
someone gave me for my birthday at least 7 years ago and that I hadn't
gotten around to reading until now. I'm enjoying the Clancy; the FRealms
book isn't bad for a D&D book, anyway, but it's pure pulp. (At least you
don't hear the dice rolling in the back of your mind as you read this
one....) I'm not sure what I'll read once I'm done with that, but I
figure it's time for some good, hard SF.
Julia
