Category: dewey decimal project
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Dewey Decimal Project: 540 NEW The New Chemistry
Continuing through the 500s and science, I get to chemistry. In high school, I was a chemistry wiz. I took two years of chemistry, acing both years, but somehow between the end of high school and the beginning of college, I managed to persuade myself that I wasn’t good at chemistry and I barely passed…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 530 FEY The Character of Physical Law
When I was a college student, I read Feynman’s autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman. It was a breezy fun read (and I was young and dumb enough not to notice the misogyny and other problematic aspects of Feynman’s personal life). Feynman has a reputation for presenting challenging topics in an accessible way, so with that…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 523.1 ALE The Jazz of Physics : The Secret Link between Music and the Structure of the Universe
Continuing through sciences in the Dewey Decimal system, I decided that this would be a good option for something to fill the Astronomy slot since I’m a musician and for a year or so of college I was a physics-English double major. The book itself is what I would call the academic memoir, in which the…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 509.2 YOU The last man who knew everything: Thomas Young, the anonymous polymath who proved Newton wrong, explained how we see, cured the sick, and deciphered the Rosetta stone, among other feats of genius
The title of this book overpromises a fair amount. I’d argue that Young is far from anonymous given his prominence in the history of physics for his demonstration that light must be a wave from the two-slit experiment (although I imagine “anonymous polymath” may refer to the fact that he published a number of his works…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 491.843 ALB Teach Yourself Slovene
At this point, I’ve been through a number of language texts, enough to get a sense for what works for me and what doesn’t (I’d like to think that in a visit to a bookstore, I’d be able to flip through a text to get a sense if it’s worthwhile). This is definitely not a worthwhile…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 487.4 CRO A Primer of Biblical Greek
As an undergraduate I studied a number of languages with varying degrees of success. Spanish, Latin, Hebrew and Ancient Greek. It was this last that that completely defeated me. After just one semester, I dropped out of the Greek class. From talking with others both back in the olden days and more recently, the difficulty of…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 478.2 SHA Essential Latin: The language and life of ancient Rome
It’s been a long time since I studied Latin, but I figured that it’s been long enough that a refresher will be welcome, but short enough that the refresher won’t be redundant. Sharpley incorporates a bit of cultural background alongside the language lessons which provides a nice supplement. This is generally connected to the Latin readings…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 464.342 DIO Las Puertas Retorcidas
The 460s are Spanish and Portuguese. I was hoping to find something in an intermediate reader since I have at least a decent reading knowledge of Spanish. I thought Las Puertas Retoricidas would be that book, but it turns out it’s a somewhat absurdist story at the service of teaching little lessons of vocabulary and grammar.…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 458.242 ADR Italian in 32 Lessons
As I worked my way through the 400s, the inevitable could no longer be postponed: I’m going to read a language textbook (for most of a year, it turns out), “learning” Italian. I picked Italian in 32 Lessons primarily because it was a slender volume and I figured I could work through 32 lessons in a…