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Books for pleasure

Books for pleasure

Books for pleasure

(OP)
Hello all. I am planning a long car trip with my wife for next weekend. I am planning on getting some books on CD for the trip and wondered if anybody had any recommendations. I am posting this on eng-tips because I think my taste in books (audio or written) are science/engineering based and figured others here may have similar taste. I appologize if this has been discussed, and would appreciate any pointers to previous threads as well (I did do a search, but couldn't find anything).

To give some idea of our interests, we have both read Feynman's collections of stories (strongly recommend to others!), and I have read biographies on Newton, Feynman, Hooke, Oppenheimer, Curie, Einstein, etc. I am primarily interested in more biographies and stories. Something like a book by Stephen Hawkings tends to get a little to abstract, technical, and hard to follow while driving (even when they are "brief" or "in a nutshell.") I was thinking if anybody has come across books with simple thought experiments or interesting or non-intuitive discussions of physics.

To keep this thread more general and applicable to a larger audience, please feel free to post recommendations of books both available in audio and written form.

Thanks! -- MechEng2005

RE: Books for pleasure

"Simple though experiments"?

Anything by Dawkins.

- Steve

RE: Books for pleasure

Karl Terzaghi:  The Engineer as Artist.

RE: Books for pleasure

Can't remember title - but go to library and look up biography of Brunel . . . (Vancouver Public Lib had it years ago).  Also a book called "The Man Who Bought A Navy" - about an Englishman who "bought" the ships that the Germans scuttled at Scapa Flow back in 1920 (or so) - he then salvaged the ships.  Very interesting.  Talks about diving, how bugs ate the cement he used to "caulk" the various holes, how he floated the ships upside down down the various English rivers to the ship-breaking yards . . .   

RE: Books for pleasure



( Baltasar and Blimunda) is a book from Saramago, it re-creates the building of the eighteenth-century convent of  Mafra and the story of the first flying balloons in Portugal, during the reign of D.joão v.

If you found a good English translation of this book it will be a good book for pleasure.

Please see an Excerpt from Baltasar and Blimunda at.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1998/saramago-prose-e.html

luis marques
 

RE: Books for pleasure


I can recommend A. Einstein's book on relativity.
It says on the cover: "An explanation so simple anyone can understand it".
I soon found out that I'm obviously not just anyone...

Regards

Dan

 

RE: Books for pleasure

(OP)
Thanks for the replies! They look interesting. A few websites for anybody who may look at this thread in the future:

Karl Terzaghi: The Engineer as Artist (By Goodman, from ASCE)
https://www.asce.org/bookstore/book.cfm?book=3240

Baltasar and Blimunda (By Saramago, in english)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Baltasar-and-Blimunda/Jos-Saramago/e/9780156005203/?itm=1

I figured I could probably put down some of my favorites for anybody following this as well (I didn't at first because I wanted the thread to stay general and not influence people to write in books similar to the ones I have liked).

The Scientists, by John Gribbin
Genius, by James Gleik (On Richard Feynman)
Isaac Newton, by James Gleik
Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel
American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (On Oppenheimer and US atomic bomb)
The Jasons, by Ann Feikbeiner
Forgotten Genius, by Stephen Inwood (On Robert Hooke)

Also, as I did state in the OP, anything by Richard Feynman.

Those are the ones I can think of at the moment. I'll have to update when I can look at my bookshelf.

Keep the suggestions coming and thanks again!

-- MechEng2005  

RE: Books for pleasure

  The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson.  This is about how they figured out the source (not the cause) of a cholera epidemic sweeping London in the 1850s.

               JHG

RE: Books for pleasure

I recommend: the Soul of the New Machine by Tracy Kidder.  Wilipedia entry follows:

The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book, written by Tracy Kidder. It was published in 1981 and won a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award. It chronicles the true story of a computer design team racing to complete a next generation computer design under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure.

I read it about 15 years ago.  There is some technical stuff in it.  It pretty accurately depicts two engineering teams in competition working on hardware and software areas of their new computer.  What I found interesting was the continuous battle to use no more memory than necessary.  Quite a different scenario than today with 16 GB thumb drives and 500 GB exterior drives.

RE: Books for pleasure

I read about 50 books per year, mostly history and biography, followed by astronomy and other sciences. Maybe one or two books each year are fiction. I get enough fiction from the local newspaper, thank you very much. Not surprisingly, my favorite genre for fiction is historical fiction.

I would like to recommend a work of historical fiction wherein the main character/hero is an engineer: "Pompeii" by Robert Harris. The hero is the engineer responsible for the several aqueducts that then served the communities around the Bay of Naples, and he is caught up in the eruption of Mt. Vesuius in AD 79. Characters include several well-known historical figures (Pliny the Elder being the best known), a corrupt developer, untrustworthy construction workers, and a light love story. Just like real life! The book is well researched and pretty well written--I give it a 4 out of 5.

I bought "Pompeii" on CD last year to listen to for several back-to-back trips between Fresno and Sacramento. Each leg of that trip takes about 3 hours, and I think the book takes about 11 hours.

RE: Books for pleasure

Debbie does Dallas??

RE: Books for pleasure

"sorry wrong nimber"
"scared to death"

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying " Damn that was fun!" - Unknown>>

RE: Books for pleasure

Nah, the book version sucks.

- Steve

RE: Books for pleasure

Anything about Nikola Tesla.  Truly interesting guy.

Good on ya,

Goober Dave

RE: Books for pleasure

Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan
Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond

Both the teensiest bit preachy but pretty interesting looks at history and people.  

Also, pretty much anything by Neal Stephenson (tech-heavy fiction)

RE: Books for pleasure

Newt Gingrich's Gettysburg is an "alternate history" that changes one thing and builds an invented "history" from that point forward with historical knowledge of the main players.

All three books are really compelling and are great on audio for the whole family (normally my kids would zone out books and listen to their CD's, for this one everyone listened and we would have to get to a stopping point before anyone would run to the bathroom at a rest stop).

David

RE: Books for pleasure

Some of my favorites:

Godel, Escher, Bach:  an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, Pulitzer Prize winning exploration into Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer.  A history of how science and religion shaped each other.

The Lady Tasting Tea by David Salsburg.  On the history of statistics.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.  What makes for a good design, or a bad one?

Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life by Jeremy Campbell.  Information theory, life, the universe and everything.

The Evolution Of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod.  The Prisoner's Dilemma, Game theory and beyond.

 

RE: Books for pleasure

I have found the series of books written by John Burdett to be quite good.  #1:  Bangkok Eight; #2: Bangkok Tattoo; #3: Bangkok Haunts.  About a half Thai/half Western policeman in Bangkok.  It is neat reading about places one has actually been . . .  Also, I have found the Presidential Agent series by WEB Griffin to be quite good as well.  Again, a different local than most books of the genre - mainly in Argentina and Uruguay.

RE: Books for pleasure

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

I haven't checked if it's available in audio, but it reads like how a witty, living fountain of scientific knowledge of a friend would ramble on as they sit next to you on a lazy day, mug of <insert drink> in hand.

jo

RE: Books for pleasure

I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Short History. I took it with me on a business trip to Russia and used it to while away the hours.

RE: Books for pleasure

A Short History of Nearly Everything is available on audio (in the UK, anyway) - I bought it for my Dad a couple of Christmases ago.

RE: Books for pleasure

Bryson's travel books are worthwhile.  The ones about the UK, Australia, US especially.

RE: Books for pleasure

I just took delivery of the 20 Volume OED.
Comes in 5 cartons:





a couple weeks' reading during a muddy spring . . .

RE: Books for pleasure

The question 'why' springs to mind!

I've resisted so far but here goes...

If you really want a "Book for Pleasure" I suggest something like the Karma Sutra.winky smile

There you go, got it out of my system now.

KENAT,

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