Hard books

[sorry about the lack of postings ... I've been busy getting married, setting up home et c.]

I don't usually make any reference to my work on this blog, but I will make an exception here and recount the gist of a brief talk I made to the LVI last week on the subject "Why read?".

I suggested what I think are three important reasons.

1. It's fun. In many ways the quality and quantity of entertainment that can be dervied from reading exceeds that of other entertainment media (films, tv &c.) and the book is a very versatile and portable piece of technology. I added the advice that you should never buy a coat if its pockets are too small to hold a paperback book.
2. It extends study, giving greater depth to the courses that you take in an academic context. This has many benefits, but includes consolidation of ideas learnt and preparation for things to come.
3. It educates. Having a set of examination certificates does not, I argue, make you educated (although they may of course testify to being educated). What makes you educated is having encountered "the best of what has been thought and known" (Arnold: Culture and Anarchy). Books are the primary means to access the rich wealth of human thought and understanding.

In discussing (2) and (3) I suggested that students should be prepared to attempt books they considered hard for in so doing they will glean at least some insight and prepare themselves for further attempts at the topic in question.

Personally, I have long been a fan of "hard books", but I am now reading what I feel is likely to be the biggest challenge ever, namely Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality.

As of this morning, I am stuck at the end of chapter 7 (p134 of 1049).

Chapter 7 is about complex analysis, i.e. differential and integral calculus of functions of complex variables. My school and university knowledge of complex numbers only ever really extended to the idea of the complex plane and a struggle through the demonstration of Euler's formula (coupled with a lecture on how to pronounce [or more accurately how not to pronounce] 'Euler').

So now I have a choice - I can either

a) forge on to chapter 8 and get even more confused; or
b) give up this book as just too hard; or
c) find a primer to complex analysis and get to grips with the big ideas before proceeding.

Common sense rules out (a) as a waste of time. So it's between (b) and (c). I think that in many ways Penrose's book is that for which I have long been searching - a genuine intellectual challenge that will stretch me beyond the everyday grind of school teaching - so it must surely be (c), with the caveat that (b) can always come later!

As I seek to embark on this detour I only pause to wonder how many other readers (or dare I say it, reviewers) haven't got this far, have got this far or have got further. As a 'popular' science book it is highly unusual, being very tough going and yet reasonably priced (ca. £17). It has been very heavily marketed and, perhaps, shares something with Hawking's Brief History of Time - widely purchased but almost entirely unread.

I will endeavour to keep blogging with my progress.