The Official Unofficial Book Group Book Discussion thread
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60 watchers
Feb 2021
8:11am, 9 Feb 2021
48,453 posts
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McGoohan
Attention adjunct book groupers. I alerted Bearders to this but thought this should be a general APB. Free lecture from Gresham College this lunchtime. gresham.ac.uk Mathematical Journeys into Fictional Worlds by Professor Sarah Hart Literary satire has long used mathematical concepts to reinforce its points. Gulliver’s Travels (1724) played with ideas of dimension, size, and shape, and a century later, Edwin Abbot’s novel Flatland (1884) explored the mathematics of higher dimensions, through the experiences of its two-dimensional protagonist, “A Square”. Both novels have spawned a host of sequels, commentaries, and films. This lecture explores how mathematical ideas have been interpreted in fiction, and discusses the unlikelihood, mathematically, of realms such as Brobdingnag and Lilliput, or the room-sized spiders of Hogwarts. For those who can't make this lunchtime, the lectures are recorded and made available on their site later. The same lecturer is looking at Mathematical Structure in Fiction on 9th March. Also, John Mullan has a lecture Crime in Fiction at 6pm on 24th Feb gresham.ac.uk |
Feb 2021
8:35am, 9 Feb 2021
44,894 posts
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LindsD
Thank you
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Feb 2021
10:22am, 9 Feb 2021
11,948 posts
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mrs shanksi
That looks interesting, thanks McGoohan
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Feb 2021
3:46pm, 9 Feb 2021
125,088 posts
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GregP
Anyone else read it and think of Bloody Stupid Johnson?
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Feb 2021
6:15pm, 9 Feb 2021
20,832 posts
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Columba
I loved Flatland, which I came across at school, possibly prompted by a maths teacher. As well as the 2-dimensional flat world, there was a 1-dimensional line world, a sort of lineland. The "people" in it were dots and lines, and since they couldn't come into physical contact except with the two either side of them, they reproduced by singing. When one person's sung note harmonised with another, a third "person" was born elsewhere on the line. To complete the picture there was also a pointland, with just one "person", the ultimate in solipsism.
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Feb 2021
9:03pm, 9 Feb 2021
17,216 posts
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Chrisull
Just finished "The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" by Philip K Dick. This is of course all the fault of Emmanuel Carrere whose "I am alive but you are dead", an inquiry into the life of Philip K Dick that keeps on basically summarising the books as Phil writes them. So I have to read them alongside, if I don't want them spolied. This one I wasn't planning on reading, but the plot seemed so utterly whacked out undesirables/unemployables are drafted to colonies on Mars where life is so much of grind they are given a hallucinatory drug (Can D) to endure the lifelong experience. This drug requires some augmentations, a couple of dolls (Walt and Perky Pat) and a miniaturised house, and the people who take the drugs "become" the inhabitants of the house, but they all inhabit one of the two bodies. So far so freaky. Meanwhile a rogue trader comes back from outside the solar system with a competing drug which creates various levels of reality, without the need for accessories, but when coming down it becomes impossible to distinguish between hallucination and reality. And it seems this trader is able to control the hallucinations. The trader may or may not be dead. He may be human or alien. It gets way, way further out than this, but hey spoilers. By the end of the book I was going, which is real, which isn't, which is religious allegory, and how many prescription drugs was Phil on at this point? I mean it is a total mindf*ck. Of course I loved it. |
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Feb 2021
12:48pm, 12 Feb 2021
125,091 posts
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GregP
blimey
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Feb 2021
12:50pm, 12 Feb 2021
125,092 posts
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GregP
The Camel Club (Camel Club, #1) by David Baldacci (Goodreads Author) 4 stars The last third was splendid - everything one could hope for from a big blockbuster thriller - but getting there was a slog. Clunky dialogue, painful mansplaining of everything from Islam to kung fu and a whole bunch of not much happening. So an uneven read, but much can be forgiven for all the 'bad bits' - or at least most of them - occurring fairly early on. Don't be put off by the near 700-page running time - the UK paperback is a big intimidating (and lovely) slab of a thing, but the text spacing is generous, the page margins are huge and the whole is rather shorter than it appears. |
Feb 2021
12:58pm, 12 Feb 2021
57,488 posts
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Diogenes
You forgot to mention the awful title, that puts me off. Overall, it sounds like rather a waste of paper, but glad you enjoyed it.
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Feb 2021
2:08pm, 12 Feb 2021
57,492 posts
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Diogenes
Gerp, I saw this link on Twitter and thought of you: amp.theguardian.com
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