“I’ve been getting book recommendations from TikTok.”
My childhood best friend said this to me during one of our check-ins, proving once and for all, that as much as you try to resist it, TikTok will eventually consume us all. Come and claim me Gen-Z, I will give the middle part a shot.
I’ll second the recommendation for Say Nothing. It’s a fantastic book.
The Strangest Man, the biography of physicist P.A.M Dirac by Graham Farmelo, is a lively read. The title is Niels Bohr’s assessment of Dirac; Bohr also said, “Of all physicists, Dirac has the purest soul.” He was, likely, autistic, and taciturn in the extreme. In the book, among many other things, we find several great physicists of the 20th century behaving in less-than dignified ways, including (quoting an earlier book) J. Robert Oppenheimer poisoning Patrick Blackett (a future Nobel laureate) with an apple. Dirac is famous for his famous equation, which lead to his postulating antimatter (his interpretation of antimatter, however, is untenable – but you won’t learn that from this book). There is a very funny joke toward the end that Dirac liked to tell.
If you have already read Say Nothing, I highly recommend Northern Spy by Flynn Berry. This is a new novel that takes place in the same era.
Just ordered Say Nothing. I’ve had Bookshop.org saved for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve signed on and ordered. Thanks for the nudge.