Reading is sexy VIII
[image: Charles Steuben (1788-1856) Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour (1722-1764) via Gaurda chi legge]
39. Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was a bit of a disappointment. Not as galling as Kant and the Platypus which I wanted to hurl across the room, but not as enjoyable as any of his other novels I've read (Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino...). I loved the concept of this illustrated novel: a 60ish rare book seller who must attempt to reconstruct his personal memory post-stroke employing novels, comics, newpaper and other ephemera. Parts of it were interesting and entertaining, but mostly it was a "self-indulgent nostalgiafest" (as sparkle_debacle warned). In fact, had the author not been named Eco, I bet the editor would have had some strong words about the quality of the ending.
40. Edward Tufte Visual Explanations. I don't usually read multiple books at once, but this book is too large and beautiful to leave my home. I became convinced of Tufte's genius after reading The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I'm not sure that I can express the importance and clarity of his work to those who may not spend much time thinking about how to make data tell their stories. This is the intersection of two of my favorite things; numbers and images. But, since many scientists are surprisingly (to me) non-visual thinkers they need to hire graphic designers like blythechild to bash their information to appealing and informative images. The books of Tufte should be equally useful to those in design (who ever work with data) as to those who spend their time gathering quantitative information. He uses vivid examples to illustrate his points; for instance how intelligent mapping of deaths from cholera in London helped elucidate the drinking fountain as source of the epidemic is contrasted with the appalling lack of scientific thinking and useless display of engineering information (which failed to plot the pertinent variables; damage versus temperature) contributed to the wrong-headed decision to launch the Challenger and the death of seven astronauts.
41. Beryl Markham's West with the Night is quite the memoir of an extraordinary life. There is a rave review excerpted on the back from a letter of Hemingway's in which he says he never suspected she could write more than flight logs and he found her writing skills made him feel clumsy in comparison. She was raised by her father in British East Africa, which became Kenya. He trained thoroughbred horses and she followed in his footsteps before becoming a bush pilot. She writes like a born story teller, not sticking to chronology, but to people and ideas. She was once mauled by a lion, hunted with local Murani warriors and nothing but a spear and her fearless dog Buller (the leopard killer), raised champion horses, survived drought, rescued lost pilots, tracked elephant for safaris and was the first person to do a solo flight from England west across the Atlantic. Though the book is certainly not a list of accomplishments- it's a vivid portrait of a life that did not know boredom.
42. I began Lisa Jardine's On a Grander Scale- The Outstanding Life of Sir Christopher Wren because I opened her biography of Robert Hooke, only to find the Preface basically told me she would skip anything already covered in the biography of Wren. So far, for an academic book by a historian of science, this is immensely readable; I've read about 100 pages in two days. The young Wren's life was turbulent, during the civil war when Charles I was deposed (and ultimately decapitated). His tremendous range of skills and interests straddling arts and science promise to make a fascinating read. Though, thanks to reynardin (who forced me to read Peter Ackroyd's novel) every mention of his architectural assistant Hawkesmoor (yes, he really existed, and he was the real "Nicholas Dyer") makes me shiver.
So I think I have some mild food poisoning. I went home early yesterday, though wisely or not, I am here at work today. Personally, I blame Dad's birthday lamb, but I haven't a stitch of evidence.