Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, Richard Feynman

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces:  lectures on Symmetry, Relativity, and Space-Time by Richard P. Feynman is a follow-on to Six Easy Pieces which I read years ago before I started this blog.  Richard Feynman is simply brilliant and his lucid explanations of difficult things makes physics far more approachable.

Started:  1/16/2018

Completed: 1/24/2018

Recommendation: Mild Recommendation

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

I really like Feynman and I really like Six Easy Pieces.  This book is a good excerpt from the original Feynman lectures and similar to his other work, this was clear, concise, and easy reading.  I only have a mild recommendation because the only new thing I got from this was a better understanding of why a Lorentz Transformation has the particular equations it does.  This is no small thing, but I wonder about how a Lorentz Transformation would work with 4 spatial dimensions (https://phys.org/news/2018-01-four-dimensional-physics-dimensions.html).  Since this lecture series from the 1960s, it would simply not be possible to account for physics that are showing up in 2018, so it is not a shortcoming of Feynman, just the shocking speed with which our understanding of physics is changing.

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.  I don't even know what it is about.  It is Neal Stephenson.  I'll read it.

Started: 11/15/2017

Completed: 1/24/2018

Recommended By:  Nobody

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Review:

Very, very cool.  So, what happens if the moon suddenly explodes?  I really enjoy science fiction that examines what happens when some new scientific advance is posed.  This book has that in spades.  The huge variety of characters is interesting and the various scientific advances that are posited seem reasonable in the time frames suggested.  This book is not realistic, but it is easy to get lost in it and enjoy the world that Stephenson has created.  He is truly a great author.  Go get it and spend several weeks enjoying it.

Converging Courses, D.L. Cooper

Converging Courses by D.L. Cooper is a book written by an acquaintance.  David and I occasionally sit down and chat and this Halloween he was talking about his new book, so I had to pick it up and give it a read.

Started:  1/14/2018

Completed: 1/15/2018

Recommendation: Not my genre

Recommended By: David Cooper and Lucy Dirksen

Review:

This book is basically international espionage and that is a genre I do not know well.  I have read few books in this genre with at least 20 years since the last.

The book alternates in point of view slipping from one character to another to provide a comprehensive understanding of the motives of each.  As a result, however, it is difficult to pick one character as the protagonist.  It seems like the college student, Phil, who both opens and closes the book is the most likely.  Not wanting to be a spoiler, it is difficult to say too much about the plot except that it involves Phil, in an act of selflessness, becomes embroiled in an international incident.  The book is full of highs and lows with the women generally finding love and many of the males meeting their ends.  The book progresses generally chronologically and so it is difficult to gather the different threads of stories and claim that there is truly one plot that binds them.  There is no doubt that the book centers on action and the action scenes seem to move into slow motion as they are described in rich detail.  It helps to know the parts of a sailboat as sails are repeatedly referenced by name (e.g. jib, halberd, spinnaker) and frequent references to port and starboard might catch the non-sailor wondering what is happening where.

Troublemaker,Leah Remini

Troublemaker:  Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini is a book that I decided to buy when I started to watch Scientology and The Aftermath on A&E network.  I felt that I had to support Ms. Remini in her battle with Scientology.  My wife read this book and felt it was easily worth the time it would take to read.

Started:  1/12/2018

Completed: 1/14/2018

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  my wife

Review:

This is a quick and easy read.  The writing is engaging and the Leah Remini does a good job of culling facts about her life that might be interesting to her from facts that might be interesting to a random reader.  A loud, brash, frankly kinda trashy New Yorker is a stereotype, by on that Ms. Remini opts to live.  I don't mean that she is trying to be someone she isn't, but that she is comfortable being who she is even if that is a stereotype.  I have to admit that I have not been fond of her as an actress (I found King of Queens to only moderately funny--I don't enjoy the insult humor or the slapstick and I find it hard to watch her on Kevin Can Wait because I feel like killing off his wife was a really harsh way to replace her with Ms. Remini).  I have been very interested in her series on A&E and find her brave brashness welcome, but she also shows her compassion for other people clearly in the series.  That is the person to whom I can relate.

This book shows some of how she came to be the person she is.  It is quite readable and informative.  Plus, it supports her and I think that she is doing a good thing trying to expose Scientology.  Go Leah!

Also, if you are a Scientologist and are reading this, it is possible that by aligning myself with Ms. Remini I am an SP, so if you think so (and you know me), I completely get it if you need to disconnect.

Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders

Our Revolution:  A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders is a book I have wanted to read since it came on the market.  I really need to understand his broad positions well before 2020 rolls around.

Started:  11/5/2017

Completed: 1/12/2018

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  my wife

Review:

Bernie Sandars articulates many views that I have come to independently in Our Revolution.  Part I of the book is how he decided to run for the presidency.  This is interesting, but insanely detailed.  I think I would have benefited from 20 or so pages, not the 200 it was assigned.  For someone who really wants to know Bernie, however, this material is important.  I read the vast majority and skipped the last 20 or so pages as I just got tired of hearing about another meeting where several hundred people showed up and talked about how their lives sucked.  Maybe Bernie's point was that many people have the same frustrations.  If so, he made it resoundingly.

The second part was more about his policies and I found this more interesting.  Unfortunately, this part of the book reads like Bernie speaks.  He makes his point many, many times on many, many issues.  Another 300 pages of excruciating detail.  I probably would have found this wonderful if I already did not know the material.  Over and over I got statistics, charts, and graphs with which I was well familiar.  One area where I learned something really good was in the Native People's section, but it was about 3 pages.

So, this book will tell you why Bernie says what he says.  If you want to know the back story, it is incomparable.  There are a lot of tax raises and service raises.  There are talks of international agreements, partnerships, and scornful international companies.  This is all great.  I really could have used a summary at the back, a table perhaps, that was a balance sheet that showed how the tax increases paid for the service increases.  Maybe some projections on what the anticipated growth rates would be for the economy due to which factor and how that would look over the long time lines (sometimes 15-20 years) in which Bernie thinks.  That would have been awesome even if it had been wrong, because it would have given me some sense of the investment that America should be making in itself.  Maybe, in my retirement, I'll be able to figure all that out and build the table that I think is missing.  Hmmm.