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

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

This was a very fun book.  From the front flap: 

Liam has always felt a bit like he's stuck  between two worlds.  This is primarily because he's  twelve-year-old kid who looks like he's about thirty.  Sometimes it's not so bad, like when his new principal mistakes him for a teacher on the first day of school or when he convinces a car dealer to let him take a Porsche out on a test drive.  But mostly it's just frustrating, being a kid trapped in an adult world.  And so he decides to flip things around. Liam cons his way onto the first spaceship to take civilians into space, a special flight for a group of kids and and an adult chaperone, and he is going as the adult chaperone.  It's not long before Liam, along with his friends, is stuck between two worlds again --- only this time he's 239,000 miles from home.


I appreciated the humor in the book.  Liam is a big World of Warcraft fan/player and if you have any experience with that kind of game (or know a child who does) I have a feeling you will appreciate that part of Cosmic.

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 -- Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Hosted by Katy.
How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

To the rocket scientist, you are a problem.
~Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach



Hosted by Freda.
Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.


"We would need fifty grams of whiskey!"
~Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

This was my (real-life) book club book for January.  We meet on the 27th to discuss.  As always, Mary Roach (Bonk, Stiff) doesn't disappoint. She has a knack for delving into topics others seldom touch and sharing what she learns with her reader in a way that never fails to entertain -- this time her topic is space exploration. I'll be interested to hear what my housemates (who both work at Lockheed Martin) think of the book.