Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, it's really short, so it has that going for it: 96 pages or just over 2 hours for the audiobook. But don't bother with the audiobook- the author's accent makes otherwise challenging ideas more challenging than they need to be. (Those people they hire to read audiobooks are actually very talented.) As to the substance, it's neither the best summary nor a good further in-depth look at the new questions and theories of physics.

View all my reviews

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was so great and so funny. Then it took kind of a dark turn and told the story of her abortion. I agree with her that these stories need to be told but I think they'd be more enlightening in the plural where different reasons, procedures, and reactions are explored. Obviously abortion is an important issue of feminism- of human rights really. However, in this book which is mostly a light-hearted introduction to feminism, this story might push away the very people she's speaking to, those that need to be reminded that feminism is a vital movement.

View all my reviews

The Universe in Your Hand by Christophe Galfard

The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond by Christophe Galfard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very nice background on the current state of physics for people with no background in it. As of right now this is probably the one I'd recommend to people who want to learn about how insane reality is.

For those of you who have a pre-existing interest in physics and have done a little reading on it, this is a nice slow review but it only gets to string theory at the very end of the book. Most of the book is spent providing a solid background for the understanding of string theory.

View all my reviews

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of the best explorations of principals and the basis of love by Jane Austen but -- first the entire love story between cousins is difficult to enjoy in this day and age. (With all due respect to One Hundred Years of Solitude which is on a different level.) The entire novel should have been edited down quite a bit and the ended expanded a lot. She left out the best part of the story where love is declared and won. Mixed feelings about this one.

View all my reviews

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the saddest most touching story. The magic is in how Kafka takes the most unbelievable circumstance and make it completely real and revealing of how humans behave and feel.

View all my reviews

The Mermaid Girl by Erika Swyler

The Mermaid Girl by Erika Swyler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a lovely short story that's also the prequel to The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler. So you should read that first. You should read that anyway because it's good.

Here's one of my (many) favorite lines because it's real and common, and no less terrible because it's common:

He'd seen it in his friends. Frank and Leah were comfortable. They'd settled into lifelong friendship; like a limb you'd not known you were missing until it appeared. Reliable, essential, but not something you burned for. No one ached; he told himself it was good to ache.

View all my reviews

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a disappointment. I've heard Brian Greene talk about physics on podcasts and seen little clips of him in documentaries. I thought this book would reflect the unique way he explains physics to make it widely accessible. This was mostly true at the very beginning of the book, but as soon as he got into quantum physics things got very dull. And really, quantum physics isn't dull. It's the opposite of dull. It's the craziest, wildest, most full of possibility stuff of nonfiction you could possibly hope for-- crazier even then fiction -- there are multiple universes!  So it's disappointing that this book was dull.

That said, this clarified the rubber band (donut?) shape of strings to me as the smallest unit. And duality as applied to multiple string theories, to the extent that I understood it, was really interesting. We're on the precipice of of an incredible understanding of the universe.

View all my reviews

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino


This very short novel is completely unique in that it is collection of stories about cities that are really ideas and feelings. The stories are tied together by an imagined conversation between Marco Polo, who is reporting on the cities, and Kublai Khan who is unable to venture out and explore himself.

It's about memory, so it's interesting to reread it and see what I do and don't remember about the cities. The first time I read it was in 2010 while my dad was dying, and the city that stuck out was the one where ships sailed out and none returned. But in my reread I discovered this wasn't one of Marco Polo's cities but the Kublai Khan's dream, to which Marco Polo replies, "Forgive me, my lord, there is no doubt that sooner or later I shall set sail from that dock... but I shall not come back to tell you about it. The city exists and it has a simple secret: it knows only departures, not returns."

P.S. Holy cow the Mongol Empire was huge! I never realized it was that big!

View all my reviews

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Woah. This is a lot. I wouldn't know where to start reviewing it. Probably you should read it, but if you do please don't blame me for telling you to read it.

View all my reviews

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sort of pointlessly violent. The plot felt very random too. The second book had none of the charm of the first book where we got to know particular characters and understand their relationships with other characters. Meh. I'm still probably going to read the third one because of my FOMO.

View all my reviews