Karl's Reading List

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company: New York, New York, 2014. One of the first reviews I posted on this blog was for internet cartoonist Randall Munroe's book How To , a book where the author took common real-life problems and provided scientifically reasoned bizarre solutions for them. The example I mentioned in that review was crossing a river by such means as freezing or boiling the river, or flying over via kite. This book, which Munroe wrote earlier than How To, takes the opposite approach: Munroe answers the bizarre and absurd questions written by his viewers with straight-forward scientific logic. Topics in this book include whether swimming in a pool that has nuclear radiation stored at the bottom would be safe, how much power Yoda has, and what would happen if all of the rain from a rain-storm fell in one giant drop. Even slightly more straightforward questions, such as how high a human could throw something, are run with to their most ridiculous-an...

Published by Arrow Books Ltd/Random House UK Ltd: London, UK, 2000 (1999). A while ago, Elise and I borrowed three books from some friends. One of them was The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents , I don't actually remember what the second one was (perhaps it was the Scarlet Pimpernel Omnibus ? Or, was that the book we lent to them in return?), and the third one was this one. The aim was that we would read these books together, but that only happened with the omnibus. The Amazing Maurice was briefly explored by both of us, but I carried it on solo, and this one had something similar: Elise and I read about 100 pages together, but it was a little slow for that combined reading, so in the end, I finished it off myself. Looking back through my blog, I realise just how long we had Timeline sitting around before even beginning it, and then it took another (shorter) period of time for me to decide to carry it on after Elise and I gave up on it... It's definitely about time we gi...

Published by Vintage/Penguin Random House UK: Dublin, 2024 (2023). This most recent Booker prize winner is also one of (if not the ) shortest Booker prize winner in history. It also is one of the cleanest Booker prize winners I've ever read, and also holds the distinction of being the first Booker prize winning book I have read without owning a copy in advance - a sign that my original Bookerworm goal is weakening somewhat, after so many books that have turned my stomach. Anyway, Orbital is a short book about a day in the life of six astronauts/cosmonauts living on the International Space Station. They orbit the world 16 times over the course of a day, reminiscing about life, facing personal highs and lows, observing a massive typhoon heading for the Philippines, thinking about a concurrent mission to the moon and whether that will make their role obsolete... ...and then they go to bed, and sleep, and the final chapters (each chapter covers either half an orbit or the whole orbit) ...

Published by Knight Books/Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1979. First published 1956. Book 4 in the 'Adventure' series. Preceded by ' Underwater Adventure. ' Followed by ' Whale Adventure. ' This fourth book in the 'adventure' series is a bit of an outlier in the series so far, in that it drops the idea of collecting animals altogether! Instead, as the title gives away, our heroes - the brothers Hal and Roger Hunt - join with a volcanologist, Dr Dan, to observe numerous volcanoes around the Pacific. The previous entry, Underwater Adventure, ended by suggesting that this was in order to figure out why a number of unusual eruptions had begun occurring in greater frequency, but the book ignores this. It doesn't really matter, after all! It was only an excuse to give the brothers a reason to begin this adventure; the point of the book is to tour a number of exotic locations and talk about the volcanoes within them, while giving some minor linking throug...

Published as an audiobook by Hodder Children's Books/Hachette Children's Book, 2013. Narrated by Jan Francis. Book 6 in the 'Famous Five' series. Preceded by ' Five Go Off in a Caravan. ' Followed by ' Five Go Off to Camp. ' Originally published 1947. The interesting thing about this entry in the Famous Five series is summed up by a comment Anne makes towards the end of the story. As things are wrapping up, she tells the rest of the group that she is happy the adventure is almost over, and that she didn't even realise they were having one for most of it. Out of the series so far, this entry has perhaps the best balance in this regards. The second book, Five Go Adventuring Again , tried a similar slow-burn approach to the story and still held our interest, but seemed to be waiting for a revelation to come, whereas the third book, Five Run Away Together , simply made the heroes miserable until they did what the title suggests they did! In Five on Kirri...

Published as an audiobook by Audible Studios, released 04-05-2021. Audiobook narrated by Ray Porter. Originally published 2021. This book surprised me, despite being very much what I expected. I know that author Andy Weir wrote The Martian (aka, the book that the 'Matt Damon growing potatoes on Mars' movie was based on) and expected that, like that book, this one was going to be a science-heavy piece of science-fiction. Tick. The plot of Project Hail Mary unfolds gradually, with protagonist Dr Ryland Grace awakening from a medically induced coma in a mysterious location, being tended to by a mysterious medical robot. To begin with, he is suffering from amnesia (Grace tells us that long-term comas are not good for people, and that it must have scrambled his brain), but as he slowly regains his memories he realises he is on a mission to save all of humanity. A "space bacteria" - given the name 'Astrophage' by Grace - is slowly consuming the light from the sun, a...

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing: USA, 2014. As I make my way through the Alphabet Soup Challenge from my local library, I sometimes find myself in the library skimming various books to find something that looks interesting (and hopefully is not too unpleasant in content). 'N' was not one of the biggest sections on display (though I was pleased to see a few 'Nicholls'... maybe someday I'll join them), and so I skimmed a few books that seemed a little more random than I usually would. When I skimmed this one, something in the way it was written jumped out at me, and made me curious enough to commit to the whole book... The Wives of Los Alamos is told in a first-person-plural voice. That is to say, the narrator's voice throughout the book is "we", and at no point is the voice identified as belonging to any one character. Rather, the book is being told simultaneously from the perspective of all the wives of Los Alamos. This is a fascinating choice of s...

Published by Wordsworth Classics: Great Britain, 2012. First published in French, 1864. In terms of science-fiction authors, possibly none is so famous as Jules Verne. Stories such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Around the World in Eighty Days have become so well-known that most people in the West will know of them, even if never having read them. Journey To The Centre of The Earth, while possibly not as well known as the above two titles, is also a fairly well-known work, though one that has not been validated by science in the same way that others of his works have. Journey tells the story of Otto Liedenbrock and his nephew Axel (our narrator), who, along with their Icelandic guide Hans, descend into a shaft in the crater of the Icelandic volcano Snaefells in order to seek passage to the centre of the earth. They are basing their journey on a hidden message found in an ancient manuscript, which purports to be a message from an early explorer who made the same journey. On the way...

Published by Fourth Estate Limited: London, 2000. This non-fiction book follows the lives of some of the early fossil-hunters of England, the first individuals to begin uncovering evidence of the existence of the ancient world. Four of these individuals are highlighted enough to feature on the cover illustration (Richard Owen, Mary Anning, Gideon Mantell and Reverend William Buckland), but two in particular are focussed on in depth: Mantell and Owen.  Mantell is presented as a somewhat tragic figure, devoting his life to the ancient world to the detriment of his own personal and financial security. He is the one who discovers and names two of the three earliest dinosaurs known to the Victorian world ( Iguanadon and Hylaeosaurus ), and he is instrumental in presenting these creatures to the public, yet he continually fails to gain the recognition he deserves, or the financial benefits he needs in order to truly be labelled a success. Misfortune also has its hand in Mantell's life, w...

Published by John Murray (Publishers): Great Britain, 2019. Randall Munroe is the creator of xkcd , a webcomic with all kinds of physics and maths based jokes starring stick figures. Being one of only two webcomics I currently follow regularly (the other being buttersafe ), I suppose I am an easy sell for this book. In How To, Munroe takes straight-forward tasks such as "Crossing a River", "Charging Your Phone" or "Skiing" and then proceeds to discuss ridiculous ways of achieving them, using physics to calculate the feasibility (or not) of each method. In the chapter on river crossing, for example, Munroe begins with simply swimming across the river, then moves on to jumping, jumping via a bicycle or car, crossing the surface of the water, freezing the river, boiling the river (to walk under the steam) and flying across by kite. The chapters are littered with Munroe's trademark stick figures who provide added humour by commenting on, or acting...