Tag Archives: nonfiction

Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster: Lancaster was living the good life, with a huge Chicago apartment, a huge paycheck, a huge shopping problem, and a huge ego. Then she gets laid off and spends the next couple years unemployed. This sort of major reality check wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining were Lancaster not so unafraid to paint herself in a less than flattering light. And she is hilarious. She writes in such a way that I can completely hear her voice and inflection. The footnotes were often even funnier than the main text. If you’re looking for a fun beach read, this is a good bet.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

and then there were three… by Supriya Bhatnagar

and then there were three… by Supriya Bhatnagar: This brief memoir details Bhatnagar’s childhood experiences with the death of her father in 1970s India. Since Bhatnagar now lives in America, she took time to point out little differences in daily life between the two countries. These parts I found most fascinating. Her family’s grief was touching and sad, but honestly I was more interested in her experiences growing up with a single mother who starts her own school. Even better, I got to bring up some of the stuff from this book, such as the “desert coolers”, with my Indian coworker, who’d had similar experiences growing up in Hyderabad. I loved the real personal feeling of the narration, like I was having a conversation ith the author rather than reading her book. I hope to read more by her someday.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Hey Canada! by Vivian Bowers and Milan Pavlovic

Hey Canada! by Vivian Bowers and Milan Pavlovic: Alice, Cal, and Gran are taking a road trip across Canada, visiting every province. Their journey is documented primarily by Alice (“reporting from the backseat”) with tweets, poems, and other interjections from Cal and Gran interspersed. I loved the often subtle humor (especially Gran’s selective deafness) and I found the brief overview of each province both informative and enticing. Aside from a quick trip to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls almost two decades ago, I’ve never visited our northern neighbors, and this book made me want to. I don’t know how much a Canadian child would get out of this text, but this ignorant American thought it was just delightful.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries edited by Hugh Massingberg

The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries edited by Hugh Massingberd: This collection of the lives of memorable individuals was often entertaining and never morbid. As an American I didn’t understand all of the terminology and abbreviations, but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment. And while I wished more than a few times that I’d known some of these characters personally, all in all it felt too long, like too many obits were included. It took me a very long time to finish. I’d recommended reading it in small doses, or picking ones to read at random, rather than reading straight through like I did.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Why Rattlesnakes Rattle by Valeri R. Helterbran

Why Rattlesnakes Rattle by Valeri R. Helterbran: I like books of random facts, and this book does not disappoint. Each entry has a few paragraphs, providing more information than your standard trivia books of one-line “did you know” factoids. I was also pleasantly surprised to come across several things I hadn’t known and was actually curious to find out (it’s easy to find facts I didn’t know but most of them aren’t particularly interesting). Unlike many books of trivia, this one is just fine to read straight through, or you can turn to any random page. And with the thorough index, this book could even be relatively useful to keep around, more than just for entertainment.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel

Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel (unabridged audiobook read by George Guidall; 10 hrs 49 min on 9 discs): This is basically a biography of Galileo interspersed with letters from his devoted eldest daughter, a cloistered nun. The life story was of course quite fascinating, from his earliest publications to the trial by the Inquisition late in his life. His daughter’s letters, however, were less illuminating, consisting mostly of household minutiae and requests for money. Her repeated professions of love seemed to border on the passive aggressive, but I suppose that may have just been the translation. It’s too bad her father’s replies were lost; I would have liked to know what sorts of things he said to her. Still, this was a good overview of the life of a great man, and Sobel remains one of my favorite science writers.

A note on the audio: What can I say? It’s George Guidall. His name on a book guarantees it will be pleasantly listenable no matter what the subject matter. I know his voice well, and I appreciate that sort of consistency.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (unabridged audiobook read by Doug Ordunio; 16 hrs 21 min on 13 discs): This book aims to answer the question of why Eurasia became such a world power and dominated other nations. The historical (and racist) answer was that there was some inherent difference in the people of those lands, but this book goes into explicit detail on why this is clearly not the case. Rather, it boils down to a large number of factors dealing with crop and livestock domestication, climate, and geographic accessibility. There’s a lot of truly englightening information gathered here, but the text is quite dense, and quite difficult to digest quickly. It’s not a casual beach read, but certainly well worth picking up.

A note on the audio: This is a difficult book to earread, as the narrator is very monotone and yet also puts emphasis on unexpected words. Having to decipher the words through the jarring inflection made it much harder to digest the already dense information. If you want to read this one, stick with the paper version.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

e: The Story of a Number by Eli Maor

“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.

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

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.

Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette

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.

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