Reading In/Out 10/27/2026

Once again, it is Tuesday. I feel like this happens at least once a week.

Let's talk about books.

OUT

Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker - I finished this on Friday. I had a good time with it. I didn't always (well, most of the time) understand the math that got screwed up, but it didn't really matter. I did understand the effect of the screwed up math. I could handle the math about how much it would cost to collect 1 million pepsi points to trade in for a fighter jet. I didn't understand the math about how many rivets would have to be placed on how many supports at which intervals, when the length of a railroad track bridge was extended beyond the original length to keep it from collapsing. I did understand why that number would need to be recalculated. There was an example of a radiation machine that was measured in a different unit than the people who were giving the radiation. They ended up giving a patient a ridiculous amount of radiation and he died. That I understood. Most of the examples were more entertaining than that last one. It was perfect for reading in short sections, since that's all the time I have at work.

Circe by Madeline Miller - I finally finished this one! I feel like the story picked up when Telegonus brought Penelope and Telemachus back to the island. It was a good ending. Everyone ended up where they belonged. I'm laughing about the blurb from Ann Patchett at the top of the front cover: "a keep-you-up-all-night page-turner." That was certainly not my experience while reading it, but Ann Patchett is probably a better judge of literature than I am. I liked it.

CONTINUING

Love, Like Apples by Jeff Zentner - This is on pause. I got 20% through the book and realized, I really don't care. It's about a guy who gets into puppeteering (a la muppets) as a kid and ends up on a TV show in the 70s called Imagine Nation. 50 years later, a friend of his son wants to do a documentary on the show and comes to Appalachia to interview him. The documentary guy has some connection to the show that he's not revealing. It has come to my attention that I am not a huge fan of puppets. I mean, I love the muppets and the Sesame Street gang (except Elmo), but I am not interested in the behind-the-scenes. That ruins the magic. Not a fan of Pinocchio, either, incidentally. Anyway, I haven't decided if I'm going to give this another go, later, or if it's eventually going to get dropped.

IN

Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon - I started this on Saturday at lunch. I read more today and made it to the 20% mark. It starts off at 3 in the morning in a Venetian square. A woman takes a large rock and throws it throw a plate glass window. Then she sits down on a bench by the fountain to wait. The alarm alerts a couple of officers. They ask her who did it, and she tells them. They take her to the station and ask for her ID, which is when they find out she is Commissario Guido Brunetti's wife. The business she vandalized is a travel agency that books trips to foreign countries and helps rich men find brothels with children working there. It's not illegal to book a trip to Thailand, so they are getting away with it. Of course, this is not a good look for a police commissario to have a wife running around vandalizing businesses.

One Dark Window Rachel Gillig - I started this last night. When Elspeth was younger, she got sick. The illness she had made the sufferer's veins turn black. Then they got magic. This scared everyone a lot, so the police had a special force to go around and kill people with the sickness or anyone with magic. Elspeth's father took her to a house in the woods to hide her. She was raised there. When the virus police came to search for sick people, her aunt pushed her out a window and told her to hide in the woods. That was the first time she heard The Nightmare. This was what was left behind by the sickness. A voice in her head. That night he saved her life. Since then, he has guided her, but no one can know. I managed to get through a whole 20 pages last night, but it was a good set.

When Life Gives You Vampires by Gloria Duke - When I was thinking about pausing Love, Like Apples I went through my LibroFM account looking for something else to listen to. This came up, and I thought it might be a good listen for the week of Halloween. Lily wakes up as a Vampire one night and doesn't remember what happened. Eventually, she runs into the guy she met at the Mexican restaurant and remembers she brought him home. He's 400 years old and thought she had given him permission to bite her. She thought he was asking some other kind of consent. Ok so now she's a vampire and it looks like vampires don't like newbies and both she and Tristan (because of course his name is Tristan) are in danger for their lives from the Supreme Ruler of Vampires or whatever he's called. So far, so good.

And there you have it. A complete turnover in reading material over the weekend. How about that?