Category Archives: Books and Reading

My Erdős number is infinity

Today’s xkcd comic made me laugh out loud!

Non-mathematicians who don’t know ErdÅ‘s or what an ErdÅ‘s number is should take a look at these Wikipedia articles: Paul ErdÅ‘s, ErdÅ‘s Number.

If you’d like to read more about ErdÅ‘s I recommend two books on him that I’ve read and enjoyed:

ErdÅ‘s also inspired a book on elegant mathematical proofs called Proofs from the Book, which is worth checking out too if you’re into that sort of books. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read this one cover to cover yet.)

Gutenberg

André and I just watched Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press, parts one, two, three, four, five and six on YouTube. I don’t know where André read about it, but the hour-long BBC documentary turned out to be very interesting. They actually build a book press like the one that Gutenberg invented, make paper and also create movable typesetting letters like it was done five hundred years ago when Gutenberg lived.

As an added bonus we enjoyed seeing places that we’ve visited, such as Mainz (Wikipedia entry) or Kloster Eberbach (see also Eberbach Abbey or Kloster Eberbach on Wikipedia). If you’ve got the time, watch it!

Some additional links:

Lots of books and stories to read

MetaFilter has a list of the 100 best mystery novels of all time, including links to a lot of the texts.

For stories appropriate for this time of the year, check out the Christmas book recommendations.

And if I may add a personal recommendation:
A few days ago I finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It had been recommended to me by a colleague, who’d read it (in German) with her students. I won’t say anything about the details of the book here because I think I enjoyed reading it especially because I didn’t know much about what was going to happen. I’ll just say that it is about two twelve-year-old boys who grow up in Afghanistan before it is occupied by the Russians.
I rarely believe the praise that is printed on the cover of a book, but in this case the quote by Isabel Allende seems spot-on:

“This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. It is so powerful that for a long time after, everything I read seemed bland.”

This is truly one of the best books I’ve read in a while. You can read the first two chapters here.

Reading seven books in a week

A little over a week ago I realized that the last Harry Potter book was going to be released soon. It’s been a while since I read the sixth book, let alone the previous five, so I decided I would use my free time (of which I’ve got quite a bit at the moment because I’m on holiday but André istn’t) to re-read all the Harry Potter books. I started on Saturday last week but didn’t quite make it in time for the last book which was delivered on Saturday morning (8:45 am!), but finished the sixth book Saturday evening and read the final book yesterday.

I quite enjoyed reading the books back to back because whenever previous occurences were referenced they were still fresh in my memory. Every book starts during the summer holidays of one year and ends with the beginning of the next, so they cover a time-span of seven years and reading them one after the other was a different experience from reading them separately over the course of six years (I started reading them in 2000, not when the first one came out).

I won’t post any spoilers here because I know that some people prefer not to read any, but I think that the last book is a good conclusion of the series, tying up a lot of loose ends. I don’t quite agree with some reviews that there are Tolkien-esque monsters in it or that the author has created a fantasy world as complex as Tolkies (have you ever only seen the movies, but not read the books?), but it’s still a lot of fun to enter Rowlings’s world of wizards and muggles.