It's winter. Which means much of what I've been doing the past few weeks and months is reading books, shoveling snow, and watching college basketball, with a bit of hockey thrown in. Here's what I've been reading:
The Young Oxford Book of Timewarp Stories
Most of our books are downstairs, on the Billy bookshelves from IKEA. But there are a couple of small shelves upstairs. One day when I was upstairs, I looked over, and happened to see this book. I'd completely forgotten about it. It's an entire book devoted to time-travel short stories. "That sounds awesome!", I thought. "How have I never read this?" So I started reading.
And the first story blew me away. It's called My Object All Sublime by Poul Anderson, and even though it's only 10 pages long, it is dynamite. I loved it. So much so that the next day I was still thinking about it. What a great story to lead off with.
The first half of the book is really strong. It also includes The Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, which is where the butterfly-effect idea originated, All the Time in the World by Arthur C. Clarke, and The Love Letter by Jack Finney, which was later made into a movie. (After reading The Love Letter, I realized I owned another time-travel book by Jack Finney, Time and Again, which I started, but never finished, a long time ago. I vaguely wondered where the book was now, and later I noticed it had been on the shelf right next to this book.)
The second half was still good, just not quite as great as the first half. Overall, this book was a lot of fun to read. And it had a page that listed similar books from the same publisher. Here's a sample:
- The Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories
- The Young Oxford Book of Nasty Endings
- The Young Oxford Book of Aliens
- The Young Oxford Book of Nightmares
Those sound like great fun!
Astronomy and Culture
I'm totally impressed that I read this book. It was a bit too scholarly for my taste, but was just (barely) interesting enough to keep me reading. It's part of a series called the Greenwood Guides to the Universe. Each book costs $70 retail, so I think they're more geared towards libraries than consumers (I got it at a book sale for a quarter). This book details how astronomy has influenced cultures from prehistory to the present.
A few interesting tidbits:
- When parts of Europe switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, they had to drop 10 days from the calendar. So in 1582, October 4th was immediately followed by October 15th. However, not all countries switched calendars at the same time. Sweden, for example, decided to gradually adopt the new calendar. Their plan was to stop adding leap days for 40 years. So every 4 years they would drop one day, and at the end of 40 years, they'd be in sync with the Gregorian calendar. They started this plan in the year 1700. However, their almanac makers accidentally added leap days in 1704 and 1708, throwing the plan into such disarray that they decided to scrap it entirely. When 1712 rolled around, they added back their normal leap day, plus an extra one to make up for the one they skipped in 1700. Thus, they had the only February 30th in history. What a mess!
- The Copernican revolution wasn't just a scientific revolution, it was a fairly devastating psychological blow as well. Learning that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe really knocked mankind down several rungs. No aspect of life was unaffected. The book even says the feminist movement can be traced back to the Copernican revolution.
- Not everyone bought into Copernicus' ideas. One guy wrote a book arguing against it, and he gave it a doozy of a title: The New Planet no Planet: or, The Earth no wandring Star: Except in the wandring heads of Galileans. Here Out of the Principles of Divinity, Philosophy, Astronomy, Reason, and Sense, the Earth's immobility is asserted; the true sense of Scripture in this point, cleared; the Fathers and Philosophers vindicated; ... and Copernicus his Opinion, as erroneous, ridiculous, and impious, fully refuted.
- The book had lots of old illustrations, many of which were provided by the History of Science Collections at the University of Oklahoma Libraries.
My Friend Dahmer
This is a graphic novel that received tremendous praise and won numerous awards when it came out. Time magazine listed it as one of the Top 5 non-fiction books of 2012. It's written and illustrated by a guy who was friends with Jeffrey Dahmer in junior high and high school. I was a little apprehensive reading it, but fortunately it doesn't go into detail on Dahmer's crimes. It mainly focuses on his school years, and on what the author remembers about a troubled kid that almost no one paid attention to. It deserves the awards and praise it received. It's really good. The art is all black and white, and visually distinctive, with a lot of attention to detail.
One incredible story the author tells is that one year in high school, his class went to Washington D.C. for a week, to see how the government works. The last day there was a free day, and while several of them were walking around trying to figure out what to do, they joked about going to see the vice president. Dahmer suggested they actually try it, and he went to a pay phone, got the vice-president's office on the line, and sweet-talked them into letting a group of high schoolers come in right then for a visit. A few minutes later, Jeffrey Dahmer and his classmates met Walter Mondale and got a tour of his office. It's almost unbelievable.
The most astonishing thing is how none of the adults in Dahmer's life, neither teachers nor parents, had any idea he was so troubled. But the students knew. They saw him come to school at 7:30am completely drunk, and hang around long after school was over, still drunk. It's a sad story, but it's told really well.