{"id":2469,"date":"2016-03-29T11:16:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T11:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2016-03-29T11:16:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T11:16:43","slug":"book-log-21-what-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=2469","title":{"rendered":"Book Log #21: What If?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions<\/em> by Randall Monroe [Hardcover, Amazon]<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Randall Monroe is a very smart guy.  That&#8217;s evident from his breakout webcomic, <em>xkcd<\/em>, but his <em>What If?<\/em> online series seals the deal.  What&#8217;s more, he has that even less frequently seen talent of being able to explain the complex in a straightforward and entertaining way.  <\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, this is a great and entertaining book, that, at times, made me laugh out loud, and others, think quite hard.<\/p>\n<p>It seems a little unfair to add this to my &#8220;books read in 2016&#8221;, since I only read about 50% this year, but honestly, I&#8217;m making my way through Dickens&#8217; <em>Bleak House<\/em>, 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&#8217;m going to claim the full <em>What If?<\/em> as a compromise.<\/p>\n<p>Books Read\/Weeks Elapsed Ratio: 21\/12 = 1.66<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=2469\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[512,481,513],"tags":[509],"class_list":["post-2469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-book-log","category-books","tag-book-log-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}