Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Good book titles to display at the shop
Here's a recent favorite:
I don't know why someone hasn't bought it yet, I love it. Perhaps because it's still January, and customers are somewhat... sparse. Today, I am thinking I will have one of those days when no one comes in at all. Ah well. I've got lots to read, if that happens.
My other favorite display title of late: How to Abandon Ship, Cornell Maritime Press.
The Odd Book of Data, by the way, is entertaining but incomprehensible in parts. Here is a sample from the introduction:
"Whatever its shortcomings, the present treatment of the mutual numerical relationships of Nature's parts may perhaps claim some didactic merit, for its deliberate purpose is to simplify - and thereby render more memorable - those quantitative data which we, and particularly the young student of science, are often at pains to absorb and retain. It is surely no blemish, in this respect, that the choice of example often enters the realm of the comic." (pp.v-vi)
Hm. Well, flipping through the book at random, I found this fascinating item:
"(At a certain observatory) it was discovered that the building inclined 1/10mm toward the East in the morning, and leaned toward the West to a similar degree in the evening, from which it was apparent that large buildings in general follow the course of the Sun to a measurable, if extremely limited, extent." (p.70)
Holy cats.
I don't know why someone hasn't bought it yet, I love it. Perhaps because it's still January, and customers are somewhat... sparse. Today, I am thinking I will have one of those days when no one comes in at all. Ah well. I've got lots to read, if that happens.My other favorite display title of late: How to Abandon Ship, Cornell Maritime Press.
The Odd Book of Data, by the way, is entertaining but incomprehensible in parts. Here is a sample from the introduction:
"Whatever its shortcomings, the present treatment of the mutual numerical relationships of Nature's parts may perhaps claim some didactic merit, for its deliberate purpose is to simplify - and thereby render more memorable - those quantitative data which we, and particularly the young student of science, are often at pains to absorb and retain. It is surely no blemish, in this respect, that the choice of example often enters the realm of the comic." (pp.v-vi)
Hm. Well, flipping through the book at random, I found this fascinating item:
"(At a certain observatory) it was discovered that the building inclined 1/10mm toward the East in the morning, and leaned toward the West to a similar degree in the evening, from which it was apparent that large buildings in general follow the course of the Sun to a measurable, if extremely limited, extent." (p.70)
Holy cats.
