Book 125: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, follows a worker named Ivan Denisovich through one day of work in Gulag, a work camp in Stalinist Russia. I read this book for my Science and Totalitarian class to help us understand the living conditions within the Gulag which we're now reading about the science that was done within this system.

This book is fantastic. Normally I give a longer review but there's not much more that I want to say about it at this time. It provides a really good look at the life of a worker in a Gulag.

I give this book 7 spoons out of 10. Although I did enjoy reading it, it might not be something that I read again, though I would be interested in reading more of Solzhenitsyn's books.

Book 124: Flatland

Flatland is a fantastic book.

For those of you who haven't read it, or haven't heard of it here's some background:

When Edwin A. Abbott (so great they had to name him twice) was writing Flatland there was a debate going on in the math community about Euclidean geometry vs non- Euclidean geometry. I can hear those of you who are not mathematically inclined groaning, don't worry, the book only has a little math. Anyways, back to my explanation that will lack a lot of technical terminology because I haven't done any research! So, Euclid was an Ancient Greek, this is important to understand. Everyone loved his geometry for a long time. In the late 19th century, we needed new geometry because Euclidean geometry only deals with flat space; lines, squares, triangles, and the like. Non-Euclidean geometry was introduced to deal with the curved space that we live in. A mathematician could explain this better and the thing with the two parallel lines, but that was the rudiments of the problem.

Flatland explores the problems of language with new math, the short-sightedness of the English for not wanting to adopt this new math because it was "unenglish"; as well as exploring the problems withing Victorian society.

I really enjoyed Flatland; and I found it highly amusing. I give this book 8 sides out of 10. The characters are lovable, the story flows well, and the world that Abbott creates is easy to get sucked into. It was a fantastic read.

 

A note on the edition pictured above: I found the footnotes extremely helpful and would recommend the Broadview edition if you really want to understand the satire.