Category Archives: Books

Book 23: The Dinosaur Feather I really liked this book. At it’s heart, it’s a murder mystery, but the murder takes place at the Institute of Biology in Copenhagen and the victim is a professor of biology specializing in the … Continue reading →

Book 22: Linchpin I generally dislike business books. Often, the salient points can be summarized in a dozen pages, and the rest of the book just feels like filler, restatements of the same points, over and over, because you can’t … Continue reading →

Book 21: The Martian Andy Wier likes space and astrophysics as much as I like quantum physics and math, but he’s done something much more impressive with his hobby. He has taken a collection of potential boring factoids about space … Continue reading →

Book 20: Practical Demonkeeping I’ve been procrastinating. One of the challenges of the book-a-week challenge is the lack of any down time in between books to simply sit back and savour my enjoyment of the book I just finished. Sometimes … Continue reading →

Book 19: Big Little Lies When a group of upper-middle class moms meet on the orientation day of kindergarten, secrets and politics mix in a hilarious and eerily familiar way. Factions form up quickly; the over-achievers with perfect hair and … Continue reading →

Book 18: The Big Short This is the story of the 2008 collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the US, leading to a virtual worldwide economic meltdown, and how banks and wall street firms enabled it to happen. It’s … Continue reading →

Book 17: The Paris Wife I have struggled with writing the entry for this book. I finished it a week ago and have since moved on to book 18 without yet being inspired. I think the problem I have with … Continue reading →

Book 16: The Emperor of All Maladies The Emperor of all Maladies is, quite simply, a fantastic book. Titled as a “Biography of Cancer”, I can think of no better description. The book describes the path of cancer knowledge from … Continue reading →

Book 15: Thing Explainer First, I have to state up front that I am a very big fan of Randall Munroe. I first became acquainted with him through his internet comic strip xkcd, through which he has revealed himself to … Continue reading →

Book 14 – Transgression My son picked this book out for me as a Christmas gift because it “sounded interesting”. And it really was. It is two stories in one; a story of forbidden love between a French girl and … Continue reading →