by Kingsley Amis

I picked up this book on someone’s recommendation and because I’m interested in sexual mores before the big revolution of the 60s. This book, published in 1960, was eye-opening.

Jenny is a pretty 20-year-old, away from her hometown for the first time, that men literally cannot stop throwing themselves at (despite her bust being only 34 inches, so she must have been QUITE a looker). It goes to show how horrible it must have been for a pretty girl back in the day when men could just make passes at you, and if anyone looked askance, it was to blame you.

The whole story was something like a train wreck I couldn’t look away from. On various levels, it was nothing less than horrible; yet I was dying to know, “Will they or won’t they!?”. The characters were almost all dislikeable. I only liked Jenny and – of course – Julian. Not coincidentally, Julian was the only man in the book that DIDN’T bodily throw himself at Jenny. Patrick Standish, her love interest, was a monster who just kept getting worse. I kept thinking, “he can’t possibly sink any lower”, and finding out that he actually could.

The book is humorous, in a way. But the many passages aiming for humor just, almost, never quite, managed to hit the mark, exactly.

by Steven Strogatz

A fun little book that explains various math concepts in crystal-clear language. My favorite was the derivation of the quadratic formula.