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Finished a couple of books I had been reading off-and-on for a while:
Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book - Girts got me this book for my birthday. It’s based upon http://www.realultimatepower.net/, and is surprisingly well done. The caricature of the narrator is what makes it entertaining: he’s a boy about 12 years old, obviously obsessed with ninjas, angry at his parents, and confused about most other things. The end of the book is surprisingly heartfelt, though not in a bad way, I think

Number: The Language of Science - I bought this book a while ago in a book shop, since at the time I wanted to read something analyzing math as a whole. This book had an endorsement quote on the cover by ALBERT EINSTEIN (seriously), so I had to go with it. My favorite chapter was definitely the first, which discussed the evolution of numbering systems and the types of operations each type of system afforded. There was a lot of stuff I just hadn’t thought about before, such as how hard it is to do arithmetic with roman numerals as opposed to arabic numbers. The chapters that followed covered the development of a variety of core mathematical concepts such as algebra, the connection of algebra and geometry, sequences, irrationals, imaginaries and infinities. Some of the discussion was too pedantic for me to find interesting, but some of the proofs were explained very well (the book isn’t proof-heavy, nor symbol-heavy fwiw). It’s a good read if you’re into that sort of thing, but reading the first chapter or so might be a better bet if you’re just curious.

Next on my list: The Audacity of Hope (already started)

Since it’s raining again tomorrow, I’ll probably be reading a bunch more…