A Glut of Books

In my ongoing distraction efforts and doomscrolling avoidance, I've found myself reading three different books at the same time. Anybody else do this?

Right now, I’m still happily enmeshed in Randall Munroe’s book What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Where I’ve come across the important question:

Q: How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry?

A (partial): The fastest human-powered vehicles at sea levels are recumbent bicycles enclosed in streamlined aerodynamic shells. These vehicles have an upper speed limit near 40 m/s (metre per second, a unit of both speed and velocity).

How about recumbent trikes? Could I reach this heat level on my trusty not-ridden-in-almost-six-years trike? Also, I don’t enjoy hot weather so why would I even bother attempting this?

Also, remember when the former guy suggested we could just, nuke hurricanes? Munroe hits on this, directing me to NOAA expert meteorologist Chris Landsea:

The heat energy of a fully formed hurricane is “equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes,” Landsea wrote. So if you drop a nuclear bomb on a hurricane, you will most likely end up with a radioactive hurricane. “Needless to say, this is not a good idea,” he wrote. (source)

Yes, I am fascinated and entertained.

I just finished Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen AND a reread of Nora Ephron’s collection of essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck.

Christ, I love Ephron's attitude.

Vera said: “Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?”
So I told her why.
Because if I tell the story, I control the version.
Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much.
Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.

Yes, this. I can totally relate.

Her curiosity is grand. I can envision us sitting down to tea, having a brill convo. (my answers in parentheses):

Here are some questions I am constantly noodling over:

• Do you splurge or do you hoard? (neither, both)
• Do you live every day as if it's your last, or do you save your money on the chance you'll live twenty more years? (a little of both but I lean more towards saving, in the hope that I live)
• Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? (too short when things are going my way and too long when I they’re not)
• Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? (I TRY to smell the roses—here in Valhalla they’re beach roses—more though, the ocean air)
• And where do carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we really all going to spend our last years avoiding bread, especially now that bread in American is so unbelievable delicious? (I’m sorta/kinda done avoiding bread like the plague. Jen, I may’ve mentioned, makes scones now. Amazing scones. These fall under the heading of bread, right? Tortillas as well. You can wrap anything in a tortilla and have a great sammich. Fresh baked bread? Sure, I’ll have a slice for brekkie. Wait, cake is bread too, right?!)
• And what about chocolate? (dark chocolate is one of life’s major necessities and you can take that to the bank!)

What reading meant to her (me too):

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.

I forgot how much I love her.

This three books at once thing is actually a tremendous thing. Depending on my mood I can get lost in a ripping yarn or an essay about falling in love with a new home or find the scientific answer to whether a toaster would work if placed in a freezer (weird question—I know—but would it?).

Next? Bill Bryson’s history of private life and, possibly, I’ll revisit The Foundation Trilogy. Haven't read it in more than 40 years. I bet it'll feel all new. What should be the third book? Maybe more Ephron essays.