Books, books, and more Books

Anita and I Seldom turn on the TV any more. Considering that we used to watch approx. 5 movies a week from Netflex it is pretty amazing. We never really were into regular TV except for news.

So what do we do now? We listen to books on tape. Tucson Library has an extensive collection of books on tape & CD. We usually sit of an evening and Anita does sewing or artwork and I work on my computer or write. We start up the current book and spend 2-3 hours listening while we do other things. It is great. It frees your mind and fingers. It lets you share stories in a way that you can't when reading alone. We mostly listen to fiction. We have discovered authors we never knew existed. We started with Nevada Barr who writes murder mysteries that take place in the National Parks. I could go on and on about our discoveries:Berniee the bugler, Goldie Locks Catering, The cat who....., etc. Some amazing and fun things to share. I think TV changes our attention span. 30 - 60 minutes with breaks for commercials is the longest we stay with anything. Maybe after a hard day on the job that is what we need I don't know, and maybe that is what many of us need for the kind of jobs we do.

What I really wanted to write about was my favorite books of 2005. It is always hard to pick just one. After I picked last year's "The Life of Pi". My sister, Mary, noted she liked the book but liked Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees" more. I have since read this book and it is very good. I actually have her latest book "The Mermaid Chair" sitting in my stack of books to read.

One of the things I have done over the last few years is to begin to read more none fiction books. Most of these are books about science, math, and the history of science and math. You should know I was a math major and spent 2 years in engineering and had a lot of science classes. When I was in school they taught very little history of these subjects which I think is a big mistake. History gives one a context on which to hang ideas.

I pulled the quote below from a web based Astronomy text - From Astronomy 161 The Solar System . http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/index.html

"The Earth-centered Universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy held sway on Western thinking for almost 2000 years. Then, in the 16th century a new idea was proposed by the Polish astronomer Nicolai Copernicus (1473-1543)."

The above is a lead in to my pick for 2005. It is rather obscure. The title is "The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus" by Owen Gingerich. This book reads like a mystery story. Gingerich is a science historian who becomes interested in a book published by Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus was a Polish Monk who was the first one to explain the movement of the planets by realizing that if the planets revolved around the Sun and not the Earth then the movement of the planets would become much simpler to explain. He published a book with his observations. There still exist 40-50 copies of this book and over the years Gingerich became an expert on these and by studying the margin notes, inscriptions, etc. he was able to tell to who the various books belonged. Can you image people actually wrote in these priceless old books. Thus he could see how Copernicus influenced Kepler, Galileo, and others who followed in his footsteps. This book was lost in my library but if you can find it it makes a great read and is not just for those who are scientifically inclined.

Today in the NYT I noticed a book review which deals with a new book on Copernicus' book. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/books/review/26sobel.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin