Tag Archives: books

e: The Story of a Number by Eli Maor

Posted by melydia on April 10, 2012 1 comments

“e”: The Story of a Number by Eli Maor: Like its more famous cousin pi, e is an irrational number that shows up in unexpected places all over mathematics. It also has a much more recent history, not appearing on the scene until the 16th century. My favorite parts of this book were the historical anecdotes such as the competitive Bernoullis and the Nerwton-Leibniz cross-Channel calculus feud. Unfortunately, this math history text is much heavier on the math than the history, including detailed descriptions of limits, derivatives, integrals, and imaginary numbers. The trouble with this large number of equationsis that if you’re already familiar with the concepts you’ll be doing a lot of skimming, but if the subject is confusing then reading this book will probably not give you any new insights. In short, as much as I normally enjoy books about math and science, this particular one felt too much like a textbook. Recommended only for those folks with a very strong love for the calculus and related topics.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Evermore by Alyson Noel

Posted by melydia on April 6, 2012 1 comments

Evermore by Alyson Noel (unabridged audiobook read by Katie Schorr; 8 hours on 7 discs): After surviving the car crash that killed the rest of her family, 16-year-old Ever gains the abilities to hear thoughts and see auras. Damen is the ridiculously hot new guy in school who catches Ever’s attention when she discovers he alone is immune to her telepathy. Comparisons to Twilight are inevitable, but unlike Bella, Ever has both a soul and a backbone. She doesn’t let Damen or anyone else walk all over her, and she genuinely cares about her family and friends. I had fun with this one, amused by some of the teenage silliness and intrigued by the speculations on immortality and reincarnation. In fact, Damen and Ever’s relationship was possibly the least interesting part. My favorite character was Riley, Ever’s dead little sister who still visits almost every day. I don’t know that I’ll necessarily read the rest of the series, for fear that it will focus too narrowly on the OMG-eternal wuv between Ever and Damen, but I definitely enjoyed this story.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Posted by melydia on April 3, 2012 2 comments

Atonement by Ian McEwan (unabridged audiobook read by Jill Tanner; 14 hours on 12 discs): I wanted, so desperately, to like this novel. But the fact of the matter is that I found it tremendously tedious. Though the back cover blurb talks of young Briony’s mistaken accusation regarding her cousin’s sexual assault and its horrible consequences, this event does not actually happen until about halfway through the book. The plot is buried in page after page of literary navel-gazing, and the “twist” ending put me off so much that I wondered why I’d wasted all that time getting there. I suspect the movie is tidier, assuming it leaves out such thrilling passages as Briony pondering the possibility of her not being the star of everyone else’s life story while watching her finger bend back and forth. The writing itself was fine – the description quite vivid, the language very, er, literary – but I found the whole thing tiresome and I frankly can’t understand why so many rave about this lengthy piece of rambling blather.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Fire Baptized by Kenya Wright

Posted by melydia on March 30, 2012 None comments

Fire Baptized by Kenya Wright: For decades, supernatural beings – vampires, fairies, werewolves, etc. – have been forced to live in walled-off areas, separate from normal humans. Lanore is a mixed-blood, shunned even by the other supernaturals. When she witnesses a grisly murder, Lanore takes it upon herself to solve the case before she becomes the next victim. Meanwhile, Lanore’s were-cheetah roommate MeShack and mixie revolutionary Zulu are both rather violently attempting to claim her as their own. (Seriously, it’s like neither of them can show desire without tearing her clothes.) Though supernatural beings are all the rage in YA fiction at the moment, Fire Baptized is unquestionably for adults. It’s quite graphic in terms of both violence and sex. Still, it’s a good read. Lanore is smart and interesting, and while I wasn’t too impressed with her choices in male companionship, I still enjoyed watching her figure things out and, ultimately, save the day. The world itself is pretty cool as well, with each person’s supernatural status branded on the forehead and the changes to human history their existence has manifested. I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to read the rest of the Habitat series, but this first installment certainly was quite the adventure.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Posted by melydia on March 27, 2012 2 comments

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester: One might think that the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary would be a dry read, but it most certainly is not. This is mostly due to the fact that one of the most prolific contributors turned out to be an American inmate in an asylum for the criminally insane. Seriously. True, you should have at least a passing interest in linguistics – or at least vocabulary – to get a lot out of this book, but in a lot of ways this nonfiction book reads like a novel. This is the sort of history book I enjoy. Definitely recommended for lovers of words.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Spenser Collection: Volume II: Back Story and Widow’s Walk by Robert B. Parker

Posted by melydia on March 23, 2012 None comments

The Spenser Collection: Volume II: Back Story and Widow’s Walk by Robert B. Parker: (unabridged audiobook read by Joe Mantegna): This is sort of a silly way of doing things, as Widow’s Walk came out a year before Back Story and very clearly happens earlier in time, and yet appears on the latter half of this audiobook. Luckily, I was warned to listen to discs six through ten first, so I was not confused. In Widow’s Walk, a lawyer friend hires Spenser to help prove the innocense of a woman accused of murdering her husband. In Back Story, Spenser is hired to solve a 28-year-old murder and soon discovers the trail went cold due to a massive cover-up. And you know, I really enjoyed these. Spenser – and his friend Hawk even moreso – is absolutely hilarious. Mantegna was clearly having a ball. It took me a while to get used to his cadence but once I did, I had a great time. The random asides and interjections amused the heck out of me. Even better, though there’s a long series of Spenser novels, I never once felt like I needed to have read any of the previous books.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette

Posted by melydia on March 20, 2012 None comments

Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette: A series of essays about various milestones in the history of physics from Leonardo da Vinci to string theory. If you are a hardcore physicist, you will probably find this too dumbed down to be entertaining. However, though I was already familiar with all the concepts presented here, I was drawn in by the historical anecdotes surrounding the discovery and development of these various ideas. The pop culture references, while occasionally amusing (I hadn’t known, for instance, that Fabio once killed a goose with his face), could have been cut. They were not always relevant and the connection often felt forced. Still, I genuinely enjoyed reading this book and will have to find some other science history texts in the future.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Ugly to Start With by John Michael Cummings

Posted by melydia on March 16, 2012 None comments

Ugly to Start With by John Michael Cummings: A more or less interconnected collection of short stories about Jason, a boy growing up in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I decided to read this out of a love for that particular area of the country, but was soon turned off by the characters themselves. Now, characters don’t necessarily need to be likable (if they did, no one would ever read Faulkner), but I found Jason to be a spiteful little bully without any real compassion. This was not helped by the lack of resolution in most of the stories; none of the characters ever seemed to change. Now, there’s a distinct possibility that I’m misinterpreting; the scenes are capably written, even if they don’t seem to go anywhere. The Scratchboard Project was probably my favorite: the characters aren’t pointlessly cruel to each other, and I found Shanice interesting and complex. All the same, I found the rest of this slim volume a bit of a struggle. Perhaps I would enjoy Cummings’s longer fiction better.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge

Posted by melydia on March 9, 2012 None comments

Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge (unabridged audiobook read by Charles Carroll; 8.25 hrs on 7 discs): A 30-year-old man returns from what sounds a little like the Burning Man festival to learn that his grandfather has died and he missed the funeral. It’s the end of the 20th century and the internet bubble has burst. Facing dwindling employment in San Francisco, he journeys to the tiny town of Thebes, NY, to clean out his late grandfather’s house, where he spent his summers growing up. While he’s there he runs into childhood friends, reminisces about San Francisco of the mid-1990s, goes on about a strange homeless man named Swan, obsessively tries to dig up every scrap of information about the father who died before he was born, and generally lazes about. And that’s about it.

Alas, this book is pretty tremendously boring. For a while I was blaming the reader, whose repetitive cadence was awkward and unnatural, but I really think that’s only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that I simply could not sympathize with any of the characters. I don’t have daddy issues; I’ve never abandoned my family; I’m not a nymphomaniac; I think going through somebody else’s things is great fun; I don’t do drugs; I am not in a doomsday cult. In short, I did not care. I listened to the whole thing anyway, hoping that the plot would show up in the end. It didn’t.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Tales from Moominvalley by Tove Jansson

Posted by melydia on March 6, 2012 None comments

Tales from Moominvalley by Tove Jansson: A collection of short stories about our favorite Moomins and the other creatures who inhabit their world. I liked hearing about the fillyjonk, the hemulen, and other such critters, but my favorites were about the last dragon (I heart Snufkin!) and Moominpappa’s journey with the Hattifatteners. The latter was particularly satisfying, as it’s referenced in many of the other Moomin books. As with all things Moomin, I am a terrible reviewer because I just love them so much. The characters, for all their flaws and foibles, are absolutely charming. I can never seem to get enough Moomin.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

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