Wairarapa College

95,164 pages read and 2,597 team points

Team members

Rory Hughes

1,115 pts

(892 pages read)

The Demon-Haunted World

By Carl Sagan

5 stars

Currently finding some popularity due to the scarily accurate predictions of the future, made 30 years ago, that seem especially prescient to the political situation in modern America. Carl Sagan was a popular celebrity scientist who used to present the TV show Cosmos. This is one of his last books where he argues for the relevance of scientific understanding and thinking towards the development of democracy and societal well being. Very powerful, but very readable too.
Feedback

By Nicholas R. Golledge

4 stars

One of the problems in the communication of science ideas is the inevitable reductionism in the approach when many people's minds are hardwired into more holistic explanations. Popular science tends to try and adopt the narrative language of novelists and tends to make a lot of analogies to mythology. This book is of this ilk, with the central idea being 'Feedback' loops that are defined as processes that influence others. These loops are discussed through aspects such as geology, climate, society and consciousness. There is a spiritualist feel to the writing - the holistic approach - and it is very digestible as a science text for casual readers. Probably not as groundbreaking as A Brief History of Time but definitely written by a NZ academic!
Travels & Adventures of Baron Munchausen

By Baron Munchausen

4 stars

Picked this up from a second hand book dealer as an old edition (1941) of an even older book (first published in 1785). Surprisingly easy to read although the stories ( a series of them as a supposed travel log) are quite short anyway. Baron Munchausen has been adapted through a number of different media but is often synonymous with the telling of tall tales. It is a sort of absurdist fantasy but amusing enough to tell to kids and also interesting for a load of name drops of historical figures in the text. The humour is mostly conveyed through the pomposity and verbosity of the descriptions although it doesn’t really have open gags or punchlines. I enjoyed it.

45 - 0 - 1

Add pages read

Wairarapa College

95,164 pages read and 2,597 team points

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78