Review: The Spacy Timetures of Sparco Tilo

The Spacy Timetures of Sparco Tilo by Riya Tyagi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In The Spacy Timetures of Sparco Tilo, the young author takes us on a tour of the mysterious world of quantum physics as relayed to her by the great traveler of all our universes, Sparco Tilo.

Do you want to know how best to travel through a black hole without having your body distorted beyond repair? Or maybe you want to know how to program matter so that you can build something out of thin air? These things, and much more, you will learn in Part 1.

But hold onto your hat (or your MatterDoer86!), because Part 2 will bring you back to planet earth with very practical explanations of holograms, wave functions, electron bubbles and quantum computing. And to wrap up this cruise through the nature of matter and energy, Riya, the author, finishes strong with definitions of quantum physics, negative mass, antimatter, quantum entanglement, and more.

This middle-school student has much knowledge to impart and she succeeds! Even if you are like me, with no gift for grasping complex theories in science, you will learn volumes from Miss Tyagi. She has the brain of a scientist and the soul of a teacher. Her illustrations are lively and engaging, too!

Riya says that Sparco Tilo uncovered many secrets while traveling through space and as he relayed these to her, she was fortunate to be his listener. Well, I was fortunate to be her listener and you will be, too.

Two thumbs up for the real and the unreal as revealed to us by Miss Tyagi. I look forward to more good things from this author.

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Review: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Utterly spellbinding from start to finish, The River of Doubt recounts Theodore's Roosevelt's exploration into the heart of darkness with a small group of outdoorsmen, scientists and naturalists to survey/canoe down the uncharted Rio da Dúvida in the Amazon basin.

It is a terrifying, harrowing account.

There were times I had to stop listening, just to get relief from imagining their awful suffering under relentless assault from insects, heat, drenching rains, ruined boats, fevers, dysentery, hunger, and mutinous workers. But, the extraordinary bravery, grit, and honor with which the group carried on, even in the face of death, was so compelling, that I could not stay away long.

This is a powerful page-turner.

The small expedition was ill-prepared for the brutality of the landscape due to a series of bad decisions on the selection of the people who would pack their supplies. The folly of these people bordered on the criminal, to my mind. It resulted in an ongoing perfect storm of ad hoc corrective measures all of which made the lives of the expedition completely miserable.

You will feel the sting of the insects, the bone-weary discouragement of the men as they come upon yet more rapids and must portage their dugouts, and the constant fear of predators in the water and on the ground.

They only narrowly escaped death.

It is an amazing, true story of survival against all odds. You will come to love Theodore Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and especially the unstoppable Colonel Rondon.

What an amazing group of men!


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Review: The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For a few years the book bots that track my reading habits have be nagging me with suggestions of Trollope and for no good reason I have ignored these electronic nudges. Now that I've finished my first Trollope book, I know why they pestered me so persistently. I was wide awake several nights in a row at "What the devil-o'clock!?!and now I am scouring the internet for a used copy of his full collection.I have been officially Trolloped.

The Way We Live Now is considered by many to be his masterpiece. I can't say anything about that as it is my first. But, it was breath-taking in its scope and depth of savage commentary on mid-Victorian England. The most amazing thing about novels set in this time period, to me, is the fact that you do not have to change many of the names and places to feel like you are reading yesterday's news. Truly.

In this book we have a liberal vs. conservative election, drenched in nonsense, misinformation and greed. We have a burst-bubble which costs many their entire fortunes, scoundrels making money off the honest, religious zealots seeking to convert others at every turn, conniving women and feckless men, drunks and gamblers, women struggling to emancipate themselves, anti-semitism, and an astounding preoccupation with material things and money, money, money.

Every sentence is perfectly turned-out. This is what I love more than anything about this book.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"Throughout the world, the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at wrong done to him."
"Shall a woman be flayed alive because it is unfeminine in her to fight for her own skin?"
"Rank squanders money; trade makes it; -- and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour."
"Any newspaper that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and weary its readers by praising anything."
"A liar has many points to his favour,—but he has this against him, that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally."

I hope you read this book. It does not disappoint.

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Review: City of Thieves

City of Thieves by David Benioff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A marvelous and shocking perspective on the siege of Leningrad from the lives of few strangers who find themselves thrown together on a peculiar and dangerous journey. Beautifully told - I could feel the cold come through the pages into my own bones.

This quote from the book reveals the heart and soul of the stage that Benioff masterfully constructs:

German corpses fell from the sky; cannibals sold sausage links made from ground human in the Haymarket; apartment blocs collapsed to the ground; dogs became bombs; frozen soldiers became signposts; a partisan with half a face stood swaying in the snow, staring sad-eyed at his killers. I had no food in my belly, no fat on my bones, and no energy to reflect on this parade of atrocities . I just kept moving..."

Read. This. Book.

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