Oops, I've missed my one-week window again. I've been sick, that's my excuse.

March 16
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? and other Imponderables, David Feldman (1987)

This should be an easy one, since I have very little to say about this book. As the title suggests, it's a compilation of short essays answering various oddball questions you may have wondered about. No book in this genre is going to be terribly exciting, but it might be an amusing diversion. This one isn't even that. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was bad, it just wasn't very interesting -- even by the standard for this sort of book.

I suppose it doesn't help that the book is nearly 20 years old. Several of the questions don't stand the test of time. Science doesn't change, but culture and commerce do. A lot of the questions are about everyday household products that aren't so everyday anymore.

One of those 20 years is about how long it took me to finish this book -- partly because it just wasn't very interesting, and also because its segmented nature did nothing to encourage continuous reading. A book like this is the sort that you'd put in the bathroom to read on the toilet. That's exactly where this book sat ... for nearly a year (in two different houses), because even on the toilet there was usually something else more interesting to read.

In our new house we have two toilets. The second one is in an ugly and cramped little water closet stuck to the back of the (large) laundry/mudroom. I think Ericka still has never used it. (I have.) Still, it's good to have a spare.

In that bathroom, I recently noticed, Ericka has put W.R. Espy's Almanac of Words at Play. I'm not sure when she poached it from my shelves -- or more likely from my boxes, since I have no recollection of unpacking it. I suspect that the yellow lettering on the cover had something to do with the selection. (I don't think yellow would ever be Ericka's first choice for a bathroom color scheme, but the toilet is yellow so I guess she was stuck with it. I never knew she had yellow towels, but come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing the purple ones either before they turned up in the main bathroom. If there's any color she doesn't have, I don't know what it is.)

Anyway, whatever the reason, Espy's book is an excellent choice for the bathroom. Much better than Feldman's, or any of the other books that were on the little toilet-side shelf in our former home.

11:23:09 PM  [permalink]  comment []