2006 Read List

[omly]

6. Pandora by Anne Rice
7. Life's Other Secret: New Mathematics of the Living World by Ian Stewart [a bookring]
8. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

This last in particular made me think that regyt might like it. Currently I have no plans for it.

Comments

[regyt.livejournal.com]

I have that last one. It was decent.

[omly.livejournal.com]

I am now interested in some of the other books on the making of the OED (that hopefully would not focus so much on this aspect). There are a bunch mentioned at the end, but have you read any of them?

[regyt.livejournal.com]

Mentioned at the end where?

[(Anonymous)]

In the "Suggestions for Further Reading" which starts in my edition on page 239.

[omly.livejournal.com]

oops that was me

[regyt.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no idea where my copy is at the moment, and so can't check.

[sarah-barah.livejournal.com]

Hi Emily! I've been meaning to write to you - I thought maybe we could get together in Feb. sometime. But also, I was wondering if you thought I'd get enough out of the middle book to make it worth my reading. While math and science have always intrigued me, I've never had a natural inclination towards either. Would I just be lost beyond getting any value out of it? And how about Does God Play Dice? Better yet...can you recommend a book dealing with math or science and their natural applications/appearances that I might enjoy?

[omly.livejournal.com]

I am totally up for that. As far as that second book, how much you would enjoy it seems to depends on your interests. My journal entry for it (which you apparently read) is focused on the things that I thought were interesting, but that the author may or may not have gone into depth about. I admit that it has some dry sections.

Do you know which aspect of "natural applications" you are interested in? That book is fairly general, going from snow flakes to the apparent spirals in sunflower heads to artificial life models. There are a lot of great books about snow flakes/crystals. Then again the mathematics end is often dry, depending on your interest. Science books on the same can sometimes get too indepth though. There is a girl trying to sell some of the books used for a green chemistry class that you might like. One of them is about chemistry and the environment. Give me more details and we will narrow some choices.

[sarah-barah.livejournal.com]

There isn't really any particular aspect of natural occurances or applications that I'm interested in - in fact, I liked that, from what you said, the book sounded like it touched on all kinds of things. That generality would be good. But it could certainly be more specific as long as the topic was interesting enough to hold my attention.

I think the best way I could express what I would need from this hypothetical book I'm looking for would be a series like NOVA, only in book form. I need it to be palatable to me and not lose me in the dry math and science department. I need it to only explain as much of the actual technical math and science as I would need to understand the concepts being talked about. Does that make more sense? I wish I could be more specific, but I think the NOVA thing is the most on-target way I have of describing it. I need the book to know that its audience (at least its audience in me) is fairly laymen and it needs to be a little "hey, look how fun and surprising math/science is! isn't that neat?!" without insulting my intelligence or coming off like a lame high school biology book.

[omly.livejournal.com]

This book is good content wise about giving you all the math you need to understand, but I find the authors writting style to be dry. Does that make sense? It isn't so much the content as the way he writes. If you want you could glance at "Does God Play Dice" to get a feel for his writting style.