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.

First ferns of the season

I've returned home today after spending a couple of days away to discover that the first of the fern spores that I sowed on Easter Sunday have already started growing enough to show up as green fuzzy patches. I don't think I've ever managed to get any to develop this quickly before, but my previous attempts have been in a cool north-facing room whereas they are now in a warm south-westerly facing room. Dyce says that they can appear within a week or two (or take months) so whilst this is unprecedented for me, its clearly nothing special. This knowledge does not, of course, make it any less exciting.

Species that have shown up are:

• Dicksonia antartica
  
• Dryopteris cambriensis
• Dryopteris carthusiana
  
• Dryopteris oreades

none of which I have grown before.

At the moment, the polythene bags preclude any good 'photos, but one there are some real prothalli to show, I'll take some pictures and upload them.

My A. hispidulum seems to be doing well and has really brightened up my desk. The new fronds (there are 3 at various stages of uncurling) are very pale, though, with no real brown colour to them. Altman says this may be a sign of too much water, so I'll hold back on the water for a couple of days - the compost is still just about moist to the touch at the moment.

Robert Harris: The Ghost

WOW

read it!

That's all I'm going to say.

New Ferns

Easter has also allowed a flurry of pteridological activity. I have sown this year's set of spores (40 pots, currently cluttering my home) and purchased a beautiful new Asplenium hispidulum (Asplenium bronze venus) from RHS Wisley.

More good books

With the glorious relaxation of the Easter holidays I have been able to start reading my way through my birthday acquisitions from Foyles, which were somewhat substantial.

Having finally finished re-reading Eco's The Name of the Rose, I have sped through a superb Gervase Fen detective thriller by Edmund Crispin - Holy disorders which is a complex superposition of cathedral life, Nazi fifth columnists and devilry. In addition, I've been reading a rather beautiful volume by Hazel Rossotti (sometime member of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford) entitled Fire - Servant, Scourge and Enigma. Originally an OUP edition (1993), it is now available as a Dover paperback (2002) that is an unabridged reproduction, though without colour prints. Rossotti divides the book in to five themes

• fire, the phenomenon
• fire for comfort
• fire for use
• fire as hazard
• fire for contemplation

and takes with reader through a gentle whirlwind of everything fire-related. Rossotti has achieved the rare distinction of being readable and yet full of content and would engage the reader, whether scientist or layman.

Next in my sights are Robert Harris's The Ghost and a monograph on the historical development of the use of chloroform, mainly focussed upon applications in anaethesia. After those, there's an Eric Ambler thriller and a biography of Lavoisier so I should be busy for the rest of the week!

Traitor's Purse

I have commented before on the wonderful service that Vintage are performing by keeping some of the country's most brilliant crime fiction in print. I have just finished Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham, a novel that I had never spotted in the Penguin Classics series but has been released relatively recently by Vintage.

It is an amazingly compulsive read. The central idea is that AC wakes up in hospital to find that he has complete amnesia and that he quickly discovers that he is supposed to be saving Britain from complete disaster in the middle of the second world war. The reader shares all of Campion's bewilderment, frustration, confusion and fear as he races to re-discover his mission and prevent the destruction of Britain - for we see (or rather don't see!) everything from Campion's perspective. See this link for more comprehensive information, but beware the spoilers!

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is completely different from The Tiger in the Smoke and indeed from all her other novels. Absolutely thrilling.

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I've also bought my first new book of the year - Pompeii (Robert Harris). I really want to read Ghost, but I'm waiting for the paperback!