Still in Hibernation

And still sleepy. And still craving high GI foods. I've found that the best way to combat this is to sleep a lot and eat high GI foods. Also, this weekend, I've had my monthly visit from my red friend (not a communist, more like a fascist), who requires lots of sloth and gluttony.

Under these circumstances I would usually make a trip to the video store for 10 weekly DVDs but I've got a larger than usual stack of books to read (some from the library), which I need to get through.

This is my reading stack:
(I'm an ADHD reader, so I'll read a few chapters of one book then switch to another book etc)

Fiction:
The Brothers Karamazov By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz

Non-Fiction:
Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the struggle for the soul of Science by David Lindley
The Curies: A Biography of the most controversial family in Science by Denis Brian
Love, Life, Goethe: How to be happy in an imperfect world by John Armstrong

(Why do all the non-fiction books have sub-headings?)

The biography of the Curies, obviously, is about Marie and Pierre Curie, as well as their daughters Irene and Eve, but also contains some interesting background information on the politics and culture of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (mainly France and Poland). It's quite readable, but in terms of its physical weight, it's the heaviest of the books - not surprising, since it's the only hardback.

Perdido Street Station - which defies neat categorization, so I'm going with 'grunge fantasy' - is also physically heavy, despite being a paperback. I've nearly dropped it onto my cat, Willow, a few times (she likes to sit on my lap when I'm reading). Because it's a paperback, I make the mistake of holding it in one hand, usually with a cup of tea in the other. Eventually my hand will cramp-up, the muscles in my arm will give out, the book will tumble and Willow will be squashed. I'll have to be more careful.

Interestingly, Uncertainty, which is about the development of Quantum Physics in the early 20th century, and is the intellectually "heaviest" of the books, is actually the physically lightest. You'd think it should 'feel' heavy - but quantum physics is pretty wild and unpredictable; it doesn't like to go with the obvious.

I haven't read very much of Love, Life, Goethe, so I don't yet know how to be happy in an imperfect world. I need to read a bit faster, lest I become despairingly unhappy in an imperfect world. Its physical weight seems about right.

Children of the Alley is an allegory of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Physically, it's not nearly heavy enough.

The Brothers Karamazov: see this Effulgent13 label for anything Karamazov related. Physically, well, I can't really feel it anymore when I pick it up, it's just so much a part of me.