Solitaire Book Club: Empire of the Sum

Empire of the Sum by Keith Houston. Another entry from both the I-heard-about-it-on-a-podcast and Kurlansky-style-non-fiction categories, Houston's fast, funny, and thoroughly-well-documented book is subtitled The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator and it lives up to its name. Starting with the axiom that the existence of a pocket calculator necessitates pockets and calculation, Houston takes us through the development of both, from biology and prehistory  onward. Pockets are dispensed with pretty quickly, but the path to a calculator as we know it takes us from counting rods to abacuses to slide rules and through mechanical and electrical adding machines to get to the glory days of the late 20th century and the ubiquitous TI-81. Houston rides us into the sunset as well, detailing the calculators replacement by - and assimilation into - the computer and mobile device.

A great read all the way through, and I will be looking for his works on Punctuation and The Book.

Solitaire Book Club Three-fer and pre-vue

I have been remiss - here's a catch-up lightning round:

Carbide Tipped Pens edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi. This collection of hard science fiction short stories was a throwback to my youthful engagement with the genre in the best possible way. The selections were well-curated and the stories high-quality; and, as with most anthologies (and boxes of chocolates), if one offering doesn't particularly appeal to your taste the next one will likely hit that sweet spot dead on.

 

 

 

Head On by John Scalzi. I usually try to avoid dropping into a series after the first installment, but Scalzi delineates his world of "threeps" so well that it was easily to be swept away in a murder mystery involving investigators, suspects, and victims whose consciousnesses reside in artificial bodies. So far, Scalzi has ever disappointed.

 

 

 

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain. An exquisitely crafted story of love, loss, disappointment, and resilience that spans the struggles of characters from the mid 18th century and the early 21st. Achingly human and highly recommended for anyone with a heart.

And here's a little preview of a project that won't reach fruition till the end of the year. The Power Broker by Robert Caro is a monumental (1200-page) biography of the man who, more than any other individual, quite literally shaped New York City. The podcast 99% Invisible is going to make a project of reading it. Here's how host Roman Mars put it:

We’re going to spend 2024 reading it together and talking about it with some of our favorite people. These will be extra monthly bonus episodes of 99% Invisible in which we’ll cover about 100 pages at a time, taking us all through the coming year.

I have decided to join in this endeavor (and you can too), so in addition to the other book club selections, I will be working my way through this for the next 12 months:

 My paperback copy came just today (not from Amazon) so I had better get a move on, eh?