Catching up something mad

Oooooh, boy. The end of 2014, 2015, and most of 2016 sure dragged by. Some stuff got read:

1. Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall, Jeremy Bernstein: Interesting bit of history. Bernstein wastes a tremendous amount of energy pointing out how little Heisenberg knew or understood. The editorial comments detract from the whole rather than add to it.
2. On Paris, Ernest Hemingway: Here's my favourite passage, from "On American Bohemians in Paris": "They have all striven so hard for careless individuality of clothing that they have achieved a sort of uniformity of eccentricity." Hipsters in 1922.
3. Etruscan Places: Travels through Forgotten Italy, D.H. Lawrence: How much more enjoyable this would be with coloured plates for each chapter.
4. Around the World in 80 Days, Michael Palin: Book of the TV show.
5. The Emperor's Giraffe (and Other Stories of Cultures in Contact), Samuel M. Wilson: I recall enjoying this, and not just for the title's majestic animal.
6. My Name is Mina, David Almond: More YA fiction by the author of Skelig. Enjoyed it.
7. We Never Make Mistakes, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: two novellas.
8. Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys: Music History As It Ought to be Taught, David W. Barbers: from the author of When the Fat Lady Sings.
9. Classical Music for Beginners, Stacy Combs Lynch:
10. Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy, Viktor Suvorov:
11. World of the Maya, Victor W. von Hagen: Because I thought I might go to Belize this summer (2016).
12. The Girl Who Played Go, Shan Sa: Not as much go as I hoped in this novel.
13. 13 Clues for Miss Marple, Agatha Christie: 13 short stories.
14. Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City, Russell Shorto: Very good, though I could have done with a lot less "FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY OMG LIBERTY SO GOOD LIBERTY DEFENDER OF LIBERTY USA LIBERTY USA I AM AN AMERICAN EXPAT LIBERTY SO FREE LIBERTY".
15. Hit Me with Your Best Shot!: The Ultimate Guide to Karaoke Domination, Raina Lee: Funny and filled with actual good advice. It purports to explain why karaoke videos are so completely nonsensical: "music publishers won't allow the song to be storyboarded (a.k.a. matching the videos with the lyric content), karaoke videos are the result of pulled-together stock footage". Whether this is true I do not know, but I plan to spread this story of doubtful authenticity far and wide.
16. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines, Thomas C. Foster: Entertaining. I want to read through the list of works in the back, of course. And of course I won't.
17. Notes of a Piano Tuner, Denele Pitts Campbell: Not as interesting as I hoped. Collection of not-very-interesting stories from the author's life as a piano tuner.
18. Most of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman, ed. Laurie M. Brown & John S. Rigden: I'll read anything about Feynman, of course.
19. Hunting Fish: A Cross-Country Search for America's Worst Poker Players, Jay Greenspan: The subtitle is misleading at best, but OK. I'll read any dumb poker book that's more story than technical advice. The author is less of a douchebag than McManus, so that's good!
20. Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey: Ashton gave me this. Fun read.
21. Kushiel's Chosen, Jacqueline Carey: So of course I had to read the rest...
22. Kushiel's Avatar, Jacqueline Carey: As is the norm, they don't really get better.
23. Kushiel's Scion, Jacqueline Carey: I wasn't going to read the second trilogy, but Nikki got the first one for me at a book sale...
24. Kushiel's Justice, Jacqueline Carey: It's OK, though I enjoyed the first trilogy more.
25. Kushiel's Mercy, Jacqueline Carey: More stuff happens.
26. Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman: I recall being vaguely annoyed at this book, but leafing through it now I can't for the life of me remember why. I suspect I disagreed with something somewhere. Oh well.
27. Alice in Quantum Land: An Allegory of Quantum Physics, Robert Gilmore: Re-read a classic while thinking of how to explain QM to people.
28. Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition, Walter Gratzer: Delightful. Also good ammunition for all the "nutritionists" out there. We know nothing.
29. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Papadatos, Di Donna: Half of Greece was apparently necessary to write this. It's good, but of course I wished for more science, more philosophy, more logic, more depth.
30. Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide, Alex Reinhart: Excellent companion to How to Lie with Statistics. Just like we know nothing about nutrition, we know nothing about statistics. Except it's arguably worse: we (the collective human race) actually do know stuff, but we're really bad at actually using any of it or paying attention. This merits re-reading a few times. Possibly most shocking discovery: the "women synchronize their periods" idea is based on a statistically flawed study!
31. Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You, Dr. Mardy Grothe: a book on chiasmus. Lovely.
32. The Cheaper the Crook, the Gaudier the Patter: Forgotten Hipster Lines, Tough Guy Talk, and Jive Gems, Alan Axelrod: A weird book to read cover-to-cover, but there you have it. Desperate times, you know?
33. A Devil to Play: One Man's Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra's Most Difficult Instrument, Jasper Rees: The oboe would like to have a word with your subtitle, but OK. This is one of those books like Wordplay that gets you excited to do something, but it's not as good as Wordplay, and frankly I don't care about the French horn very much. Gimme a trumpet or a clarinet any day. It's nice to read about other people actually doing things, though.
34. Le Papyrus de César, Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad: An Astérix sans Goscinny (of course) or Uderzo (more surprising--I didn't read Chez Les Pictes, so this was my first exposure to Ferri & Conrad). It's nothing I got excited about. Is the magic lost or am I too old? I don't know.
35. Fats Waller, Igort & Sampayo: In Dutch, because bizarrely that's the translation I found at Feldman's.
36. The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, Wanda von Sacher-Masoch: Re-Search claims it's the first English translation. Very interesting. LvSM sounds like an emotionally abusive dick.
37. Enough to Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, Princess Kali: Meh.
38. With Borges, Alberto Manguel: Memoir of the boy who spent several years reading aloud to Borges after the latter had lost most of his sight. I of course read anything Borges-related.
39. Thames & Hudson Photofile: Lewis Carroll, introduction by Colin Ford: Somewhere on the edge between interesting, creepy, lovely, and fascinating.
40. The Detective Story in Britain, Julian Symons: Wonderful monograph on British detective stories. Joan enjoyed it greatly, too.
41. Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language, Deborah Fallows: Hey, this was pretty good for its genre! Light fluff travel/language read.
42. Math Hysteria: Fun and Games with Mathematics, Ian Stewart: Got me excited like Game, Set, and Math and Gardner's books used to. Includes generalizations of the pirate & gold coins puzzle, and a fun chapter on chomp and other chocolate eating games (which got me thinking about chomp strategies and higher-dimensional chomp).
43. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, John Steinbeck: What a damn' shame he never finished this. The appendix with the correspondence from JS to his researcher and his agent is interesting, too, if a bit dry at times.