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Since I'm not getting around to a proper post, my recent reading:
Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages, by Gaston Dorren: what it says on the tin, the 20 languages that currently have the most speakers, one chapter per language. For each language, Dorren talks about what languages it's related to, where it's spoken and by whom, relevant history, and other hopefully interesting things, like different writing systems.
A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly and Zach Wienersmith: the authors became more skeptical about space colonization as they did more research, and the book is partly about why some of the reasons given for colonizing the Moon, or Mars, or outer space don't hold up, because space is a terrible place, and it's trying to kill you. They talk about space law, such as it is, and compare it to the Antarctic Treaty System, an approach that sounds like it shouldn't work, but has been for decades. The authors' conclusion isn't that we shouldn't colonize space, it's that we should take our time, and in a few centuries people might be able to build a city on Mars.
The Golem of Brooklyn, by Adam Mansbach: a novel in which a non-observant Jewish art teacher steals hundreds of pounds of modeling clay, and builds a golem because he has nothing better to do. It's good, and somewhat dark: this is a golem in the tradition of Jewish folklore, not a science fictional robot.
Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages, by Gaston Dorren: what it says on the tin, the 20 languages that currently have the most speakers, one chapter per language. For each language, Dorren talks about what languages it's related to, where it's spoken and by whom, relevant history, and other hopefully interesting things, like different writing systems.
A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly and Zach Wienersmith: the authors became more skeptical about space colonization as they did more research, and the book is partly about why some of the reasons given for colonizing the Moon, or Mars, or outer space don't hold up, because space is a terrible place, and it's trying to kill you. They talk about space law, such as it is, and compare it to the Antarctic Treaty System, an approach that sounds like it shouldn't work, but has been for decades. The authors' conclusion isn't that we shouldn't colonize space, it's that we should take our time, and in a few centuries people might be able to build a city on Mars.
The Golem of Brooklyn, by Adam Mansbach: a novel in which a non-observant Jewish art teacher steals hundreds of pounds of modeling clay, and builds a golem because he has nothing better to do. It's good, and somewhat dark: this is a golem in the tradition of Jewish folklore, not a science fictional robot.
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