The New Northern Rambler

2021-11-08

"Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time" by Becky Smethurst

Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 9781984858696

Dr. Smethurst examines and number of fundamental questions, that I'm fairly sure many astrophysicists get asked many times during their career. Some of these questions are why does gravity matter, what was around in the beginning, a history of black holes (her speciality), the overall size of the universe, alien existence, and why is the sky dark to name but a few. The chapters are well written, and give good explanations, and would be suitable to inclusion in any grade school library.

In addition of this book Dr. Smethurst is a popular YouTube personality who examines unsolved cosmological mysteries, space news in general. She also contributes videos to other YouTube channels such as Sixty Symbols, and astronomy videos to Deep Sky Videos.

2021-11-01

"Ariadne" by Jennifer Saint

Publisher: Flatiron Books

ISBN: 9781250773586

Ariadne retells the Greek myth of Princess Ariadne of Crete, her sister Phaedra, their mother and father Pasiphae, and King Minos, and her brother Asterion who is otherwise known as the Minotaur.

Within this story are the tales of how Daedalus and Icarus escaped from the island of Crete, how Ariadne assisted Theseus in his killing of the Minotaur, and his ultimate betrayal and abandonment of her on the island of Naxos.

The story also tells of the life of Phaedra who thinking Ariadne is dead marries Theseus, The revenge of Daedalus on Minos, some history and further stories about Dionysus, the rivalry between Dionysus and Perseus, and so much more.

This is an excellent retelling of the Greek classical myths, and Ms. Saint has obviously done extensive research to support her backstory. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I'm looking forward to all future books she might decide to write.

2021-10-25

"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need" by Bill Gates

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This book is well written, easy to understand, and laid out in a format that should make it easily accessible to all readers. I found this to be an extremely interesting book to read, and Mr. Gates has definitely done a lot of research to support his proposed solutions.

A lot of his facts and figures are drawn from the United States, but Mr. Gates has used a number of other countries as examples of what the United States and other rich countries can and should do to alleviate the climate problems the world is currently facing.

It was nice to see that the opinions and actions of climate change deniers we're ignored, as not only was thus outside the scope of the book, but it would simply have derailed a very important discussion.

An excellent book, highly recommended.

2021-10-18

"Ready Player Two" by Ernest Cline

Publisher: Ballantine Books

ISBN: 9781524761332

While I really enjoyed "Ready Player One", I found this sequel to be extremely hard to get into. One reason for this was the gigantic information dump that is essentially the first two chapters. Most authors have heard the phrase "Show Don't Tell", but unfortunately this essential rule of thumb for writing wasn't followed in this sequel to the first book.

The story takes off directly after Ready Player One ends, but as mentioned above the seemingly endless backstory of what happened over the next few years to the various winners of the game completely caused me to lose interest in the book.

The premise seemed good, but ...

2021-10-11

"The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood" by James Gleick

Publisher: Pantheon Books

ISBN: 9780375423727

This is a very interesting book that takes a in-depth look at the history of information from the very beginning of humankinds existence to the modern day (or at least 2011 when it was published).

Mr. Gleick looks at such topics as drum speaking, cryptography, the telegraph and development of morse code etc., modern day communications using things such as memes, and much more.

There is so much information in this book that a times it is rather daunting to read, but at the same time the amount of research the author has done to support his conclusions is amazing. A book such as this could easily (at least in my humble opinion) form a good portion of a master's thesis.

Admittedly, it did take me some time to read this book but a lot of that was due to the fact that not only was I reading other books at the same time, but the majority of the world at the time was trying to get things back to normal after the Covid outbreak.

Overall, and extremely well written and researched book that is recommended for anybody who is studying communications theory, and do some sand anthropology as well.

2021-10-04

"Hench" by Natalie Zina Walschots

Publisher: William Morrow

ISBN: 9780062978578

Hench is a delightful book that tells the tale of a temp agency worker who works for the criminal establishment, as the blurb says "even criminals need office help..."

The protagonist Anna is working though a temp agency for criminals in a place where people are tested at puberty to see if they have any super abilities. If you do then you get to be either a super-hero or a super-criminal, if you are neither then you are a regular person which typically seems to mean you are either a target or will end up as collateral damage when the former two groups fight. At the beginning of the story gets a job with an up-and-coming criminal. But then she gets injured by a so-called hero and while she is recovering she begin researching things and it turns out when she compares injuries that she's the lucky one. The story itself from that point on revolves around her essentially getting revenge on this supposed "hero" after assessing all the damage that he is actually done in the name of justice.

This is a very interesting take on the super-hero / villain genre as the effects of their epic battles are never looked at. Don't believe me, just think of any Marvel comic book, movie (and DC for that matter too). The heroes and villains are fighting each other, buildings are falling down (and you'd expect there to be people in these buildings right, after all that what buildings are built for), cities are being destroyed, etc. etc. ad nauseam but who cleans it all up, pays for it etc.

This is the authors first novel, and it is a wonderful debut. I am definitely looking forward to any future novels, as she leaves us with an interesting cliff-hanger.

2021-09-27

"What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" by Randall Munroe

This book was an absolute delight to read, however I'm still having issues even after finishing it three days ago with regard to some of the weird questions people will ask.

Randall Monroe is the creator of the xkcd web comic, and its associated what if blog. The questions range from the relatively normal to some that are so far out in left field that it's hard to believe people would actually think of things like this. However Mr. Munro does a wonderful job i'm explaining how things work in the real world.

Some of the topics covered are global wind storms, the risks of swimming in a nuclear spent fuel pond, using machine guns as a jet pack, how a submarine would fair in orbit, the effects of hitting a speed bump at ridiculous speeds, building a bridge from London to New York with Lego, printing out Wikipedia, the odds of guessing all question right on the SAT exams, and many more.

Some these questions may sound a little odd and off the wall (and some are really odd and there are no walls anywhere near), all are answered honestly but with a good deal of humour.

There are hints in the book that additional volumes might be coming out, and if so I will definitely be looking for them. I'll also be signing onto xkcd.com and checking this out. After all I've got some weird questions too.

Highly recommended.

2021-09-20

"Myth Adventures" by Robert Lynn Asprin (1946-2008)

Publisher: Nelson Doubleday

It's been many years since I first began reading this series, and it was a lot of fun to take a break from the more serious books I've been reading and indulge myself in this one. Myth Adventures is a compilation of the first four books in the myth series, namely "Another Fine Myth", "Myth Conceptions", "Myth Directions", and "Hit or Myth". As you can probably appreciate from the title it is humorous (the titles being puns), and from the cover its in a fantasy world. I typically do not read a lot of fantasy, but this series is definitely one of my favorites.

The series begins with "Another Fine Myth" and tells the tale of Skeve, a rather lacklustre apprentice to the magician Garkin. In an offhand demonstration of power Garkin summons a demon named Aahz, and then gets himself killed by an assassin. This has the unfortunate result of trapping Aahz with Skeve in the dimension he was summoned to.

Because it seems assassins typically travel in groups to ensure the success of their missions Aahz and Skeve are now on the run, as Garkin had been able to kill his assassin, who therefore couldn't return to his partners and divide up the loot. Other characters from future novels in the myth series are also introduced.

In the second book "Myth Conceptions" the dynamic duo of Skeeve and Aahz have to defeat a huge invading army, that is camped on the border of their kingdom, and preparing to cross. A project such as this will surely test Steve's limited magical abilities, but with the assistance of a few friends some of whom we met in the first book they concoct a rather interesting response.

"Myth Directions" has Skeve, Tananda, and a number of others trying to find Aahz a birthday present and that was the easy part.

"Hit or Myth" has Skeve's boss King Roderick skipping town in order to avoid getting married, and forcing Skeve to take his place with the use of his trusty disguise spell, and that's just the beginning/

This first four books in this series are extremely funny, and the entire Myth series has acquired a significant following in fandom. The numerous jokes, puns, word play, and odd situations the group find themselves in make the story worth reading.