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Wednesday Reading Meme
Feb. 14th, 2019 03:29 amApparently this is a thing? Exciting!!
What I Just Finished Reading
The Quantum Astronomer's Handbook, by Michael Brooks.
A post-modern biography of polymath (and quintessential Renaissance rogue) Girolamo Cardano, which also serves as a layperson's introduction to quantum mechanics. Very weird and kind of delightful. Of course, I'm saying this as someone with a degree in Renaissance intellectual history whose RL friendgroup disproportionately favours physicists, so I'm pretty sure I'm the precise target audience for this book. But even beyond the subject matter, this book was something special. I like books with a strong authorial voice, and you can't get much stronger than in this book, where the author not only openly cops to his obsession with his subject, but suggests that he and his subject are somehow quantum entangled and takes up at least a quarter of the book with a series of imaginary conversations he has with Cardano in an Inquisition cell.
So, part biography, part physics textbook, part intellectual history self-insert fanfiction. What's not to love?
One pet peeve: Brooks refers to Cardano as "Jerome," in that weird British academic tradition of anglicizing the names of historically interesting foreigners (come at me, anyone who has ever referred to Michelangelo as "Michael Angel"). It's outdated and vaguely xenophobic and drove me a little insane the whole time.
What I'm Currently Reading
The Pigeon, by Patrick Suskind.
A weird novella about a middle aged man whose life is derailed by a pigeon. I bought it because I loved Perfume back when I first read it (high school?) and because it was short and why the hell not. Unfortunately, it seems to fall under the general umbrella of "20th century books about white European men having weird, surreal, and vaguely philosophical midlife crises." Which I pretty much knew when I picked it up, but occasionally those books are compelling? This one is not. But it's also short so I might as well finish it.
The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavich.
Visceral, no-holds-barred, a-linear memoir in which the author takes us through her life--her abusive childhood, her history of addiction, her series of love affairs (with men and women in, wow, steamy-hot detail), the stillbirth of her child, her failures and her triumphs, all told through the central lens of her past as a competitive swimmer and lifelong love of water. Not that that summary really comes anywhere near to doing it justice. Beautiful in a way that is difficult to put into words. I'm dragging this one out. I don't want to be done with it. I don't know what'll I do when it's gone.
What I'm Reading Next
probably Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Although his Cities trilogy was so freakin good, this is gonna have some work to do to live up.
and maybe I'll finally finish The Mermaid, by Imogen Hermes Gower. I was actually quite enjoying that one, I just made the mistake of getting it as an audiobook, which I just don't listen to that often these days.
I'll need a new non-fiction, though, if anyone has recommendations. I've been on a big memoir kick, but anything is welcome, as long as it is beautiful and strange. Recs of poetry collections also accepted. I am an uncomplicated woman with uncomplicated desires: I simply want to hold another person's shivering, ink-stained soul in my hands. For a few train journeys and rainy afternoons at least. Help a lady out?
What I Just Finished Reading
The Quantum Astronomer's Handbook, by Michael Brooks.
A post-modern biography of polymath (and quintessential Renaissance rogue) Girolamo Cardano, which also serves as a layperson's introduction to quantum mechanics. Very weird and kind of delightful. Of course, I'm saying this as someone with a degree in Renaissance intellectual history whose RL friendgroup disproportionately favours physicists, so I'm pretty sure I'm the precise target audience for this book. But even beyond the subject matter, this book was something special. I like books with a strong authorial voice, and you can't get much stronger than in this book, where the author not only openly cops to his obsession with his subject, but suggests that he and his subject are somehow quantum entangled and takes up at least a quarter of the book with a series of imaginary conversations he has with Cardano in an Inquisition cell.
So, part biography, part physics textbook, part intellectual history self-insert fanfiction. What's not to love?
One pet peeve: Brooks refers to Cardano as "Jerome," in that weird British academic tradition of anglicizing the names of historically interesting foreigners (come at me, anyone who has ever referred to Michelangelo as "Michael Angel"). It's outdated and vaguely xenophobic and drove me a little insane the whole time.
What I'm Currently Reading
The Pigeon, by Patrick Suskind.
A weird novella about a middle aged man whose life is derailed by a pigeon. I bought it because I loved Perfume back when I first read it (high school?) and because it was short and why the hell not. Unfortunately, it seems to fall under the general umbrella of "20th century books about white European men having weird, surreal, and vaguely philosophical midlife crises." Which I pretty much knew when I picked it up, but occasionally those books are compelling? This one is not. But it's also short so I might as well finish it.
The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavich.
Visceral, no-holds-barred, a-linear memoir in which the author takes us through her life--her abusive childhood, her history of addiction, her series of love affairs (with men and women in, wow, steamy-hot detail), the stillbirth of her child, her failures and her triumphs, all told through the central lens of her past as a competitive swimmer and lifelong love of water. Not that that summary really comes anywhere near to doing it justice. Beautiful in a way that is difficult to put into words. I'm dragging this one out. I don't want to be done with it. I don't know what'll I do when it's gone.
What I'm Reading Next
probably Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Although his Cities trilogy was so freakin good, this is gonna have some work to do to live up.
and maybe I'll finally finish The Mermaid, by Imogen Hermes Gower. I was actually quite enjoying that one, I just made the mistake of getting it as an audiobook, which I just don't listen to that often these days.
I'll need a new non-fiction, though, if anyone has recommendations. I've been on a big memoir kick, but anything is welcome, as long as it is beautiful and strange. Recs of poetry collections also accepted. I am an uncomplicated woman with uncomplicated desires: I simply want to hold another person's shivering, ink-stained soul in my hands. For a few train journeys and rainy afternoons at least. Help a lady out?
