What I've been reading

Guilty Creatures: a menagerie of mysteries
by Martin Edwards (editor)

"Animals of all kinds have played a memorable part in countless mysteries, and in a variety of roles: the perpetrator, the key witness, the sleuth’s trusted companion."

A selection of short stories mostly by authors I don't know, with mysteries and detection of the kind that I very much enjoy. Just a random pick from the library that was good fun to read.

The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens

"The irrepressible Mr. Pickwick and his fellow Pickwick Club members travel around the English countryside getting into all kinds of scrapes and adventures."

It's a very long book and started by introducing too many characters for me to follow, but once I got into it and began to remember who was who it improved. I reckon it would be an excellent choice for an audio book, particularly to hear Sam Weller and his father's voices.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
by Carlo Rovelli

"These seven short lessons guide us, with simplicity and clarity, through Einstein's theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, elementary particles, gravity, and the nature of the mind."

Such a good book that I had to tell the person I was sitting next to going to France on the Eurostar train about it. Just seven short chapters but so magical, explaining concepts of physics so that you can't help but understand them. Skiing companion JD read it on the way back, and then passed it on to other skiing companion JW. What's more, I'll probably read it again when I get it back.

How Late It Was, How Late

by James Kelman

"One Sunday morning in Glasgow, Sammy awakens in an alley, wearing another man's shoes and trying to remember his two-day drinking binge. He gets in a scrap and wakes up in a jail cell, badly beaten and, he slowly discovers, completely blind."

This is written in Glasgow vernacular from the point of view of Sammy, a wrong 'un who has been trying to straighten out his life when he has a big unspecified row with his girlfriend, goes on a bender, loses his memory, gets beaten up by the police and wakes up blind. And that's all in the first few pages. What he does next is what the rest of the book is about, and despite having absolutely no common experiences to draw upon, I found it engrossing and extraordinary. It ends with him leaving his home to go south, and I for one want to find out what happens next. I hope he's all right.

Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
by Carlo Rovelli

"Our understanding of reality has changed throughout centuries, from Democritus to loop quantum gravity. On a wondrous journey we are invited us to imagine a whole new world where black holes are waiting to explode, spacetime is made up of grains, and infinity does not exist."

My second time through this book, and I'm absolutely sure I can grasp some of the concepts if I give it another two or three goes. Given the truly mind blowing material, he explains it so well that for a minute or two I really thought I understood the ideas behind quantum gravity. Wonderful stuff.