What I'm reading ...

I have started How Not to Be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life by Jordan Ellenberg. I wanted something different to read, away from fiction, and saw this at an airport and made a note. Here’s the blurb:

The Freakonomics of math--a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands
The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn't confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do--the whole world is shot through with it.
Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It's a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does "public opinion" really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer?
How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician's method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman--minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia's views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can't figure out about you, and the existence of God.
Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is "an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength." With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - by Joanna Cannon

I really enjoyed reading this book. It had almost everything I look for in a novel: a host of well-drawn characters and a sensibly complex story line with numerous interwoven threads. Two timelines is also a way to make the story more intriguing and I clearly remember the hot summer of ‘76. Telling large parts of the story through the eyes of a child is not 100% original, but it works well here, often adding a little humour as well as an interesting perspective.

I really enjoyed some of the language usage; examples:
“smell of scraped plates”
“I watched my mother’s face argue with a smile”
“Mrs Morton sat near the front so God could hear us better”
“rattling like a pebble in a life made for two”
“The front room and the sitting room are both ticking-clock empty”
“a quarrel of sparrows”

I look forward to future books by this author.

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon, my next book club book. At a glance, it appears to have the kind of complex story that I enjoy. So I am optimistic. Here’s the short blurb:

Mrs Creasy is missing and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands.
And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined…

The Winter Ghosts - by Kate Mosse

I am not really sure what to make of this book. I enjoyed reading it and the quality of the writing was, IMHO, very good. The scene descriptions were extremely vivid. My challenge is being asked to accept something that resists rational explanation. I can stand back and accept that apparently irrational things happen in real life, so having this as a basis for a story is fair enough.

I was troubled by the perspective - initiated by the book’s title - that this is a ghost story. I do not believe in ghosts, but, if I did , I am not sure that I would expect them to speak in 20th Century English/French despite being alive so many years before, when the language [Occitane] was quite different.

Overall, I think the writing quality might induce me to sample other work by the author.

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse, my next book club book. I have often heard the author on the radio, but not read her work before. Here’s the blurb:

The Great War took much more than lives. It robbed a generation of friends, lovers and futures. In Freddie Watson's case, it took his beloved brother and, at times, his peace of mind. Unable to cope with his grief, Freddie has spent much of the time since in a sanatorium.
In the winter of 1928, still seeking resolution, Freddie is travelling through the French Pyrenees - another region that has seen too much bloodshed over the years. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. Shaken, he stumbles into the woods, emerging by a tiny village. There he meets Fabrissa, a beautiful local woman, also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories of remembrance and loss. By the time dawn breaks, he will have stumbled across a tragic mystery that goes back through the centuries.

The Card: A Story of Adventure in the Five Towns - by Arnold Bennett

This proved to be an enjoyable read overall. The story is not remotely believable and the same may be said of most of the characters, but I think that this was the author’s intent. I guess Denry is the kind of person who “if he fell down a drain, he would come up with a new suit”. The story is amusing and has some good twists and turns. Sometimes it was predictable, but I was also surprised from time to time.

I was surprised to find that, even though it never felt difficult to read, I made very slow progress and it took me quite a while to work through the 169 pages.

The language of the book is rather old-fashioned, but that is inevitable, given its age. I made much use of my Kindle’s built-in dictionary, but it was stumped from time to time. After a while, I “got my ear in” and enjoyed the style. Some language that I found interesting:

“He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellow wonderful and dazzling, but he so regarded himself.”
“He spent far more on clothes alone than Denry spent in the entire enterprise of keeping his soul in his body.”
The use of the word “realty”, meaning “real estate”; no longer used here, only in the US.
The use of the word “tatterdemalions”. [It means tattily dressed people.]
A reference to an untidy person being “anyhow”. That is what my grandmother used to say.
A comment on chocolate manufacturers imprinting their “Quakerly names” on their products.

I am not sure whether I will explore more of the author’s work, as I am not sure what I might learn from his books [and I do like to learn stuff, even from fiction]. But, I guess if I feel like an easy, nostalgic read, I might.