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I’ve been intent to review or at least mention the books I’ve been perusal lately. I realized after I situated my negative review of Limitless Ascent that there are plenty of useful books that I haven’t mentioned. So, here are shell reviews of five books I’ve peruse recently–all sharp up at either the remainder table at Moiety Price Books, or the agreement table at the big box retailer in the topical mega shopping center.

Mario Livio’s The Of gold Ratio: The Story of Phi, the Creation’s Most Astonishing Numerate is an engaging story. The volume begins with a brief narration of early arithmetic before diving into the making known of and usefulness of what has become known as The Of gold Ratio. From its first use in constructing pentagrams and the Of plato solids, to its uncanny arrival in nature, Livio shows the import of the number 1.6180339…–the run over that satisfies the equality: x2 - x = 1. Perhaps lawful as importantly, he debunks many myths about the Of gold Ratio and its supposed mystical properties. Entirely a delightful read, and one that I commend highly.

I’ve always been prying about how words come into being, how they vary meanings, and how they eventually descend out of favor. I’m not a immense word nerd (and I medium that in the best possible way) resembling some of my friends, but I do enjoy acquisition of knowledge about them. In The Life of Language: The fascinating ways discourse are born, live & die, authors Sol Steinmetz and Barbara Ann Kipfer take us on a trip through the English language, describing the many not the same ways words draw near into the language and how their pronunciations and meanings make some change in over time. They also explain how to peruse the etymological information found in dictionaries–something my tall school and college English people teachers never bothered to discipline. If they even knew. The writing mode of speech is a little bit dry in places, and the work is probably a third larger than it in reality has to be, but I quite enjoyed the peruse.

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