Haven't read a non-fiction in a while. As a matter of fact, I don't recall reading any books that are about mathematics, and that includes, sadly, my algebra textbook in high school.
I was at the library the other day with
T, and while waiting for him to come out of the bathroom I was by math & science shelves. I was skimming the backs of the books there with not much of an interest, until I came to this one:
Our Days Are Numbered -How Mathematics Orders Our Lives.
Had I not been watching
The Big Bang Theory over and over on Watch Series, my eyes would have most likely passed right by it and kept on going.
T would have come out of the bathroom, and I would have left the place with him to the newspapers, and that'd be the end of my ever so brief relationship with the math & science shelves forever. I would never step into that section of the library ever again. But like I said, I'm a bit of The Big Bang Theory fanatic. I am not going to dignify that my brain is tv-washed, but when I read that title, I totally heard Sheldon Cooper in his condescending tone of his voice, "Sak (the way he calls Penny), everything in our lives are numbered. How do you live and not see it?"
I laughed at that in my head, took the book in my hands, turned to some random pages and skimmed the sentences to see the way the author, Jason Brown, writes, decided that it was neither annoyingly expository the way I hate in non-fiction books, nor too wordy for me to comprehend (don't you hate it when people make a boring subject even more boring simply by lack of better words to explain it?). I sat on the chair nearby and started reading it.
T came out. Asked me what book it was I was reading. I showed him the hard cover. "Looks a lot of fun, " he said, adding, "you know, you are good at
shogi. You're probably better at math than you claim yourself." His words were all I needed to hear. I took the book home.
I am still in the first half of the book, but I gotta tell ya, I wish I could go back to my high school years and give this to 16-year-old me. So this isn't much of a report. I've simply told you the story on how I've slowly opened the gate to the world of mathematics for the first time in my life at age 32.
Until next time,
Sak
p.s. BTW,
T's choices that day were "The Jurassic Mystery" and "Science in Fairy Tales". What a nerdy couple we are...
