Guardian Unlimited Books | The digested read

I’m in the mid­dle of three books right now:

• The Oxford Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Britain. Excel­lent, not dry at all, with details that add, not dis­tract
• Fron­tiers of Com­plex­i­ty: The Search for Order in a Chaot­ic World. I imag­ine I will nev­er fin­ish this book, most­ly because of it’s sheer com­plex­i­ty. Every­time I read a por­tion I get some­thing new from it. Let’s just say there’s a lot of the­o­ret­i­cal math­e­mat­ics involved.
• The Name of the Rose, by Umber­to Eco. Wow… I just start­ed this last night and read it until I passed out, nose to page. The syn­tax is dif­fer­ent, and it is obvi­ous­ly a trans­la­tion, but still so rich and per­son­al. I am involved already.

Guardian Unlim­it­ed Books The digest­ed read

I hate the Read­er’s Digest ver­sions, but some­how I think this is pret­ty slick. Enjoy, as I did.