What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Monroe [Hardcover, Amazon]
I bought this for my son to take to camp about a year ago. Once he finished, I picked it up and started reading it in snatches.
Randall Monroe is a very smart guy. That’s evident from his breakout webcomic, xkcd, but his What If? online series seals the deal. What’s more, he has that even less frequently seen talent of being able to explain the complex in a straightforward and entertaining way.
I had an objection to one of his hypotheticals early on, but I have since forgotten what it was. I should learn to be like Fermat, scrawling notes in the margins.
Regardless, this is a great and entertaining book, that, at times, made me laugh out loud, and others, think quite hard.
It seems a little unfair to add this to my “books read in 2016”, since I only read about 50% this year, but honestly, I’m making my way through Dickens’ Bleak House, and it is a monster of a novel. I come close to giving it up at times, and then a chapter comes along that reengages me. The Penguin Classics version of this book is 1036 pages. Really it should count as 2-3 books, so I’m going to claim the full What If? as a compromise.
Books Read/Weeks Elapsed Ratio: 21/12 = 1.66