When I was little we had an old children’s book called The Bumper Book. I hadn’t thought of it in ages, but recently I was looking through Kathy’s impressive collection of children’s literature from the 1960s and before, and it occurred to me that The Bumper Book would make a fine addition. It properly belonged to kayigo-it was her third birthday ( Read more... )

Quick summary: Navigating Wallace's tortuous prose is like eating a glass jawbreaker with a wisdom center: if you can tough it out through the pain, not to mention considerable loss of blood, you will discover something beautiful and profound. If you enjoy beauty and profundity in mathematics, at least. If you aren’t, but are still curious ( Read more... )

The Annotated Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift, with a biographical introduction and notes by Isaac Asimov. New York: C. N. Potter (distributed by Crown Publishers), 1980.

It is a Testament to the Genius of Jonathan Swift that his Masterpiece, Travels into several Remote Nations of the World1, a Work of biting political and social Satire, ( Read more... )