I had been sunk in short story/poetry land for so long that I forgot how glorious it is to read a novel. It's strange how it could take me a month to read a 250-page book of short stories, but I can read a 250-page novel in two days.
Just finished The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt. Three days of pretty intense reading sessions. I usually don't read hardbacks (since I'm cheap), but I got this as a free review copy from my dubious job as a book reviewer, so I was all too happy to eat it up. Perhaps I was partly so enthralled by it because of my new obsession with science ... but the characters were also very compelling. I want to read all about Nikola Tesla now. I think that's what good fiction does for you - makes you more interested in real life.
Favorite quotes:
A thought Tesla has about humans - "I've forgotten the way their emotions leak out of them, muddying the air with sorrow, anger, joy."
"Love does destroy, over and over again. So it is always the greatest surprise to find how stubborn hope can be."
There was also a lot about Tristram Shandy, which I found interesting, and this reflection on the most famous aspect of that book: "Yes, I know there are many years in between then and now. But they were bad ones. I thought, if you have to, you could record the years that followed by simply inserting a black page, a solid black square of ink. It would be the best way to describe the darkness that came next - a page of black ink, printed on both sides."
Yes, I liked this book. I have to write something coherent about it at some point.
2 comments:
I also am reading the book. It is fascinating. A bit about me to see why I might think so. Telsa and I have some amazing parallels in our work. When I read Margaret Cheney's book, "Tesla: Man Out of Time". I nearly had a heart attack due to the striking things I read. One of his coil devices pictured in the book looks just like a drawing I made in 1993 of an high-voltage device, I designed to be used in a electromagnetic propulsion device. Anyway, here is my story:
First, an original poem I wrote. I hope you enjoy it.
Ode to a Temporal Mariner
To travel the seas of time again,
Across the universe afar.
Past strange giants amid Orion's clouds,
Their faces flecked with stars,
To behold with a glittering eye,
A vortex oh so bright,
Swirling like a witch's oil,
Burnt green, and blue and white.
Oh to meet an alien race,
With ships so wonderous to fly.
And all I'll ask is a timemachine,
And a star to steer her by!
John Rockie Coppolella
starman4@bellsouth.net
I place this work in the Public Domain. Repost freely.
jrc
I hope you enjoyed the poem. We can dream can't we? However, I have been doing much more than dreaming.
I am a Jesus disciple. Also, a Nikola Telsa enthusiast. My background is in
Astronomy, Electronics, Theoretical Physics, Cosmology, etc, etc...
I believe I have made a scientific breakthrough. Although, I don't have any
credentials or mathematics to back it up yet. I may have figured out the
true nature of time and space and also the relationship between gravity
and electromagnetism and matter. Let me know if you want to hear about
it. Newton was on the right track, as well as Einstein, but they made some
false assumptions upon which science later built.
That complicated later scientific refinement and thinking. So, what you
have is many disjointed theories that explain a model of a part of reality
to a point, but they can't work together because of the false assumptions
and errors of fact at the heart of basic science. Mostly, things calculate
well, but it is at the extremes and the seams of the sciences that things
tend to fall apart. They build one flawed model that works pretty good in
the real world, then further refine it with another flawed model to explain
the shortcomings of the first. They are chasing their cosmic tails.
The New World Order and the New Physics of Rockie Coppolella
Rockie Coppolella's present view of the physical universe requires a
paradigm shift away from the old Newtonian view of things and the newer
Einsteinian scientific principles. Both have some basis in predicting
reality, but fall short when trying to tie in with other theories that predict
overlapping portions of reality. Due to extreme hardship presently endured
by the author, only a cursory framework of the most scant theoretical
details has emerged. Over time this may change, but present
circumstances would require big financial improvements to allow for
more work to be done on this theory. IF anyone can contribute to this or
otherwise improve the author's circumstances in anyway, He would be
grateful to the nth degree in any future bounty that may arise from his
research, and many other ideas he has to improve the lot of mankind.
I have inventions planned to cure cancer and HIV, find lost children,
tornado and hurricane control, Lightning capturing, teleportation, spinal
cord repair, mind control to reprogram killers and other vermin etc, etc.
But no one cares, cause I don't have credentials. But you know me. I jest
not. Anyone willing to help me in anyway will benefit from the rewards,
as will those truly in need of deliverance and help. I don't plan on giving
this to the folks who have (demon)strated they don't care for us, as this is
for humanity not inhumanity.
: UFO seen by me around midnight August 12-13, 1978 during Perseid
meteor shower, Abingdon, Maryland, USA. Contact me for details or to
give info on the same.
Sincerely,
John Rockie Coppolella
1133 Curtis Drive
Forest Park, GA, USA 30297
tel: (404)361-7019
serious literature
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