Science books may have the reputation of being filled with boring facts, but I've read my share of innovative and entertaining works. Carl Sagan and Chet Raymo have long had a special place on my bookshelf. I also have Alice in Quantumland by Robert Gilmore and Bad Astronomy by Philip Plait. The later actually is a collection of facts, but they are presented as answers to misconceptions about space.
A definite new addition to my collection of "weird" astronomy books is The Edge of the Sky by Roberto Trotta. It was a gift from Barbara (she knows what I like) and I finished it this afternoon. I must admit that it was a little difficult to understand, almost like trying to read Old English, or listening to Australian accent. It's a short book (85 pages) which is a good thing. The description about the universe is woven around the account of an astronomer taking a one-night shift at a mountain-top observatory.
I bet it sounds pretty conventional, right? The wrinkle is that the author only uses words that are most common in the English language. Trotta restricts himself to the one-thousand most-used words. This leads to all sorts of new terms like "Big-Seer "(think telescope), "Heavier Drop" (helium), and "star-crowd" (go ahead and guess.)
I found the story of the astronomer to be very flat, although many intriguing thoughts fill her head. Maybe those ideas coulndn't be easily described in simple words, so they got left out?
A list of the 1,000 most common words is included in the forward, and Trotta claims to have used only 707 of them in this book. I believe him, but I didn't count them myself. There's also a glossary of some of the awkward terms is at the end of the book.
I will do it here. Each word in this word-group is on his list. His book was of interest to read for a short time, but soon became a job.
(That took some editing!)
If you are into language or weird astronomy books, this might be for you. If you want to learn some astronomy, probably not-so-much.
Third item on my New Years resolutions is to read/complete at least one book /month. And it' a galaxy.
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