25 posts tagged “byopl”

Favorites: When the Nines Roll Over, How We Decide, and Silver Phoenix.

June's nearly over, and I'm just now getting around to posting May's books.

Favorites: Doomsday Book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, and Finding Nouf.

Favorites: City of Thieves, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, and If I Stay.

Here are a couple of quotations from the amazing City of Thieves. It's one of the best books I've read this year and I highly recommend it.

"I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the most absurd beauty."

"The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. German corpses fell from the sky; cannibals sold sausage links made from ground human in the Haymarket; apartment blocs collapsed to the ground; dogs became bombs; frozen soldiers became signposts; a partisan with half a face stood swaying in the snow staring sad-eyed at his killers. I had no food in my belly, no fat on my bones, and no energy to reflect on this parade of atrocities. I just kept moving, hoping to find another half slice of bread for myself and a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter."

Favorites: A Fraction of the Whole, Death by Black Hole, and The Help.

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

I've just finished Neil deGrasse Tyson's wonderful Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries. Wow. Terrific read, and highly recommended to anyone who'd like to learn more about the birth of the universe, features of galaxies, planetary and stellar life cycles, the history and progress of scientific knowledge, and many other fascinating topics. He is an adept writer and communicator, and his ability to present these concepts with clarity for the non-scientist is unparalleled. (And he has a great sense of humor.)

Here are a few passages that grabbed me:

"FM signals and those of broadcast television, however, have much higher frequencies and pass right through, traveling out to space at the speed of light. Any eavesdropping alien civilization will know all about our TV programs (probably a bad thing), will hear all our FM music (probably a good thing), and know nothing of the politics of AM talk-show hosts (probably a safe thing)."

"...for most of human history, had aliens tried to send radio signals to Earthlings we would have been incapable of receiving them. For all we know, the aliens have already done this and unwittingly concluded that there was no intelligent life on Earth. They would now be looking elsewhere. A more humbling possibility would be if aliens had become aware of the technologically proficient species that now inhabits Earth, yet they had drawn the same conclusion."

"Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion. ... The claims of science rely on experimental verification, while the claims of religions rely on faith. These are irreconcilable approaches to knowing, which ensures an eternity of debate wherever and whenever the two camps meet."

Favorites: Ghostwritten, Interpreter of Maladies, and Outliers.

Favorites: Serena, Little Brother, and Harlot's Sauce.