Book Beginnings & Friday 56 -- How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence, or two, of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading.

 As an astronomer, I have long had a professional aversion to waking up before dawn, preferring instead to see sunrise not as an early-morning treat, but as the signal that the end of a long night of work has come and it is finally time for overdue sleep.

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice. Check out the rules and join in the fun.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. Post a link along with your post back to this blog.

 

It was 2001, and though perhaps Arthur C. Clarke's predictions of space tourism and obelisks on satellites of Jupiter had not come true, it was finally time to get rid of the hundred-year-old technology of the photographic plates.  To some, it was a sad day when the photographic plate handling system at the 48-inch telescope was dismantled, though anyone who had ever had to work in the absolute darkness of the nighttime dome, moving plates from their holders to the telescope to the darkroom, could not have felt too bad to see it all go.

 

 

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown is my latest non-fiction love (not quite a rival to Dan Ariely's place in my heart, but good stuff).  Brown does an excellent job of talking to non-astronomers about his discovery, in 2005, of a tenth planet and the turmoil his discovery brought to the world of astronomy and the world at large, eventually bringing the number of planets in our solar system to eight rather than ten.  I really really liked this book.  Accessible, humorous, and personal.  5/5 stars

Teaser Tuesdays -- AKA Dan Ariely rocks

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading and asks you to :


1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3 . Share 2 "teaser" sentences also citing the title of the book and the author and in that way people can have great recommendations if they like the "teaser".

4. Please avoid spoilers!

 "Could all this mean that sometimes we might actually behave less rationally when we try harder?  If that's so, what is the correct way to pay people without overstressing them? "
p. 51, The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely


The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

First off, you should all know that I adore Dan Ariely. His first book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, totally rocked my world.  Ariely is a behavioral economist who teaches at Duke. One should be able to read a book on behavioral economics in bed without laughing and/or snorting aloud while needing to say to your family members every five minutes,"Okay, I know the light is out, I'm reading with a flashlight, and your eyes are closed, but just listen to this part."  Do not expect to be able to do this with any book written by Dan Ariely.  After reading Predictably Irrational I decided that if I ever went back to school I'd get a degree in behavioral economics this time. I don't know if I could really hack it or not, but Dan Ariely makes the entire field absolutely fascinating!


I knew very little about behavioral economics before encountering Ariely's work. In his words, behavioral economists "don't assume that people are perfectly sensible, calculating machines. Instead, we observe how people actually behave, and quite often our observations lead us to the conclusion that human beings are irrational" (page 6). Ariely adds that the goal of behavioral economics is "to try to understand the way we really operate so we can more readily observe our biases, be more aware of their influences on us, and hopefully make better decisions" (page 9).

Ariely includes an interesting side-bar about what motivates people to blog that would interest my fellow bloggers.  I certainly agree that I love to read comments on my own blog and I've heard many of you say the same.

I could clearly gush about this book forever.  I'll let you all admire my restraint as I simply say that if you are in the market for a new non-fiction read, this is it!

It's Monday, what are you reading?

What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila over at Book Journey where bloggers gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week.   

I gave up on:

• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

I finished:

• The Conscious Kitchen: the New Way to Buy and Cook Food -- to Protect the Earth, Improve your Health, and Eat Deliciously by Alexandra Zissu
• The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry (see tomorrow's post for more on this one)
• Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper (review coming soon)

I am currently reading: 

• The Red Thread: A Novel by Ann Hood (enjoying this)
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and Home by Dan Ariely  (I LOVED his first book and am so looking forward to this one.)

Next up: 

• The Marrowbone Marble Company by Glenn Taylor (no idea what this one will be like)