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Re: Book Club... 

By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (1)
Fri, 01 Dec 23 4:44 PM | 31 view(s)
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Msg. 47918 of 58534
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I'm about a third of the way through 'Relativity' by Albert Einstein, but while I'm understanding what he's saying at a cursory level, at least half sails way over my head. As I told my book club buddy, "I think you and I should read it eight or nine times before we meet for a discussion!"

The fact is, I don't know what a Lorentz Transformation is. Statements such as "This theory was of a purely electro-dynamical nature, and was obtained by the use of particular hypotheses as to the electromagnetic structure of matter" abound and leave me tugging at my hair.

So I'll finish the book and then put it onto my reading list to be read again... and again... and again. Eventually, if I've done the required background work, I'll get it.

For the bookclub, the next book I'll be reading is called 'The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer' by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 and was the subject of a Ken Burns documentary.




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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Book Club...
By: Decomposed
in 6TH POPE
Sat, 25 Nov 23 7:13 AM
Msg. 47686 of 58534

My buddy and I finished 'The Last Gunfight' by Jeff Guinn a few weeks ago. It's an honest account of what happened at and leading up to the O.K. Corral in 1881. It was a very, very good read that completely altered my perception of the wild west, cowboys, boomtowns, whores, the Earps and that notorious gunfight. I strongly recommend it.

And today marks the end of 'A Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens. It proved to be one of the longest short novels (372 pp) I've ever read, but I'm glad I muddled through. The ending is pretty good. The reading was often torturous - with pages going by with my not having the slightest idea what I'd just read. I don't recommend it unless it's on your bucket list for some weird reason.

If you have any recommendations, please post 'em here. We're trying not to do too many novels and no post-1859 war books. Biographies, histories, and books that teach something interesting are right up our alley. I may try 'Relativity: The Special and the General Theory' by Albert Einstein next. The cover's byline calls it "A Clear Explanation That Anyone Can Understand" - but I've got my doubts! Einstein's preface claims it is written for those readers "who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics," so it sounds like it was written for me!


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