Reading Bingo

This delightful reading bingo image was circulating the social media sites and I found it particularly inspiring. What a fun way to mix up your reading habit and get through all those books in your TBR list!

 

Of course other books will be reviewed here, but this seemed like a fun way to read those books currently sitting on TDBA shelves. The only rule was that each book had to be one I've never read. This is my personal list, so it is very science fiction, science, and nonfiction heavy, as those are some of my favorite genres. However, I encourage you to dig through your personal library and actual libraries near you to fill out your reading bingo.

 

So, without further ado, here is the list!

500+ pages - We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
Under 30 author - Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
One word title - Nightfall by Isaac Asimov
1st by fav author - Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov
Book a friend loves - Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
Forgotten classic - War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Non-human characters - Beyond Human: Robots and Cyborgs by Benford and Malatre
Short stories - American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Heard @ online - Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
That scares me - Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Became a movie - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Funny - Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
Bestselling - A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
10+ years old - 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Published this year - Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus
Female author - My Beautiful Genome: Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time by Lone Frank
Different continent - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Based on a true story - Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
2nd in series - The Dark Monk: A Hangman's Daughter Tale by Oliver Potzsch
Number in title - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Mystery - Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Nonfiction - Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Bottom of pile - Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton
Blue cover - Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
Free Space - Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Seaand of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools,Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn

Another Reason Science Is Awesome

I have just picked up The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, and so far, it is pretty good. It's much more of a chronological history of the periodic table, rather than the short story style exposition of 'true tales' I was expecting, and not as chock-full of delightful tidbits as I thought, but still all right. Reading it today, I realized that most of what Kean is discussing would probably be more impactful visually than as just words on a page. Turns out I was right. There are many interesting facts contained in the book that would make a good visual, but I figure, let's go with the namesake and see what a disappearing spoon actually looks like -

And that is a spoon melting ladies and gentleman! Turns out this is possible because of the element gallium. Gallium is solid at a moderate room temperature, but melts at 84 degrees Farenheit. As Kean says: "it's one of the few liquid metals you can touch without boiling your finger to the bone." Pretty cool, huh?

I think I want to watch superfluid helium defy gravity by flowing uphill and over walls next.....

3 Awesome Things I Learned About Planets

Astronomy is one of my favorite nerdy things. I suppose I can blame my dad for this overwhelming interest. You see, he’s an aeronautical engineer and has been involved in missions that involved the Hubble Telescope and the International Space Station. He’s actually walked around inside parts of the Space Station that are in orbit now and has a mission flag that was flown on a shuttle. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s cool as hell!

So naturally, How I Killed Pluto, is right up my alley. My inherited interest in space gave me a good background on much of what Brown talks about, but there were a few fun facts that I learned about our planets. Here are my favorite three (so far) -

1. We used to have 11 of them in our solar system. While we cry over the loss of little planet number nine, we’ve previously lost quite a few more. For 40 years our solar system consisted of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Ceres, Pallas and Juno. When the definition of planet was narrowed, Ceres, Pallas and Juno were collectively demoted to asteroids. Apparently our generation isn’t alone in mourning a planet.

2. Our days of the weeks are named after our planets. Of course this was hundreds of years ago when the Sun and the Moon were planets. What’s that you say? We have no planet named Thurs? Well, you’d be correct! Mythology translated our planets into interesting names –

Sunday – the Sun. Pretty straightforward.

Monday – the Moon. Again, saw it coming.

Tuesday – Mars. Ah, it gets exciting. Mars is the Roman god of war. The Germanic God of war is Tiw, and it is for him we named Tuesday.

Wednesday – Mercury. Famous for being the winged-shoe messenger of the gods, one of his lesser known duties was serving as carrier of the dead. Or maybe still messenger. I suppose the gods have to deliver bad news too. Anyway, his Germanic Grim Reaper cousin is Woden, who gives us Wednesday.

Thursday – Jupiter. Jupiter is king of the gods, Thor is Norse king of the gods. Ta-da. Thursday.

Friday – Venus. Even though I think Venus, the Roman goddess of love, sounds more romantic, this day is named for her Norse counterpart Frigga.

Saturday – Saturn. Of course!

3. Our planets inspire names for the elements. I kind of guessed it with Plutonium, Uranium, Mercury, and so on. But Cerium and Palladium can thank the planets for their names as well. Fun random fact for parties.

I’m sure there’s many more delightful tidbits to be discovered, but I’ll let you find those for yourself when you pick up How I Killed Pluto.