Relative reading: "Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You" by Marcus Chown

Tuesday, 2 November 2010

I was brought up to believe that there was nothing understandable that a normal person (i.e. for my purposes, me) could not understand, given sufficient effort. Hence my frustration that over the years I haven't been able to get my head around even the basics of quantum physics. There are people out there who are unlocking the secrets of the universe - the law of everything, so they say - and I don't get it. This makes me a sucker for those books which claim to explain it all in comprehensible layman's terms. Yes, I read the "Brief History of Time", and, I suspect like everyone else, understood almost nothing.

Different reading: "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford

The vanishing dream

"As ambitious as a Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne." Thus the blurb on the inside of the dust cover of this most unusual book, and, for once, it sums it up pretty well. This is history, history of a brief moment in Soviet life, just after the worst shackles of stalinism had fallen away and just before - so it seemed - the command economy started at last to deliver the shiny consumerist future rashly promised by Nikita Krushchev. You know it is a history because there of masses of endnotes, and entire sections in italics which explain historical developments. But though the endnotes give you precise sources and references, they often also say things like: "this was actually said three years earlier by this character as a different conference, but it seemed to fit better into my story here," or "I made this up, but it sums up what was happening better than any of the actual events"...

Blog only post: "The Now Show Book of World Records"

This one doesn't count. It's not a proper book, but one of those stocking filler funnies you get at Christmas, and which you read on the hoof in odd moments between things. Thing is, this is really funny. I love the Now Show on Radio 4 (which I listen to as a podcast), and this book just provides you with the same sort of humour in written form.

Find out stuff like Britain's most pointless tourism promotional slogan, worst display of ignorance by a TV celebrity, most egregious use of hair dye by a politician... You get the idea; it's very funny.

Travel reading: "Far Horizons" by Frank Gardner

If you ever watch the BBC news, you'll know who Frank Gardner is. He is the "security correspondent" who knows a lot about the tangled antagonisms of the Middle East.  Thanks to those antagonisms he is also a wheelchair user, having been the victim of an opportunistic Al Qaeda shooting in 2005. It was remarkable enough to survive that shooting, but to have maintained his job and kept up an active professional and travelling life since it happened is amazing, and does him vast credit.

Definitely Holiday reading: "The Good Husband of Zebra Drive" by Alexander McCall-Smith

I find the books on people's shelves fascinating, basically because I imagine they say a lot about the people who own and (I generally presume, unless they are in pseudo leather-bound sets) have read them. But if books say a lot about their readers, is it necessarily in one's interest to reveal all of one's reading material? This thought crossed my mind as I considered this latest little review: frankly, I am really not going to do my credibility as a reader of (at least potentially) worthwhile books any favours by revealing I am on the eighth of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, am I? And yet, well, if I'm doing this, I may as well come clean about it: I do enjoy the odd little escapist foray into the world of Mma Ramotswe and her probably very rose-tinted Botswana.