In spite of the hot and humid weather I have been having a lovely weekend. I took Friday off from work and I am taking tomorrow off too. I scheduled the long weekend a couple months ago because Bookman’s birthday fell on Saturday. He requested the time off from work too but only managed to get the weekend off (since he works in retail, getting an entire weekend off is a feat in itself). So I get two days with and two days without Bookman. We’ve had a nice two days together celebrating his birthday. We met friends for breakfast, we got vegan pizza from our favorite pizza place, I baked a cake and we made ice cream. And I got him a 14-cup Cuisinart food processor. We just ordered it because it was cheaper online. But first we had to look at the thing in person to make sure it was what he wanted. It has a bread dough kneading thing in it and he has ambitions of baking homemade bread. We have a bread machine but we’ve never been able to get the settings right for vegan bread. So I expect great things from kitchen wizard husband.

Besides celebrating, there has also been plenty of time for reading. I am getting in deep into The Information by James Gleick. The book is in three parts, the first part, where I am currently reading, is the history of information. Information creation begins in earnest when writing was invented. Gleick writes about the technology of the alphabet and the technology of writing and it is weird to think of these two things as a technology, but they are if we think of technology in its very broadest sense.

The section is also very heavy on the math but in a good way. I never thought about it before but all those symbols and things we use in mathematical calculations went through a period of flux and eventual standardization. And my historical view is limited to what I have read in this book thus far, but it really does seem like a man of the name Babbage along with Ada Byron Lovelace (Lord Byron’s daughter from his first wife) conceived of the first calculator and then the first computer. In fact, Ada even wrote some code for the “Analytical Machine” that had not yet been built. Ada seems like a brilliant and fascinating woman and I will be locating a biography of her when I get the opportunity.

If you are thinking about this book and the maths part is scaring you off, don’t let it. It actually is making me want to take some math lessons to relearn all that I have forgotten and even forge ahead and learn some new stuff too just for fun mainly, but it also won’t hurt if I ever decide to pursue any interests in information or computer science. I never thought I would ever say I wanted to learn math for fun. It must be the heat and humidity getting to me! Anyway, even though the math parts are a little fuzzy in my understanding, they are not necessary to be able to read and follow what is going on in the book. And in compensation, there is also gobs of stuff about language including a fascinating history of the dictionary.

Since this is a big book and it comes in three parts, I might just do reviews of the parts as I complete them. So consider this a sneak peek into the history of information.

I also picked up a book from the library that I was in line for. Correspondence: An Adventure in Letters by N. John Hall. It is about a retired New Jersey bank clerk who inherited a bunch of letters from his great-great grandfather who was a bookseller in Victorian England. The letters are to famous writers of the period. The letters in the book are mostly emails between the former bank clerk and a Christie’s auction house representative. But there is supposedly lots and lots of literary goodness. I might start reading this tonight. If it turns out to be good, it and The Information will become my main reading squeezes because both books have a line of people waiting for them and I won’t be able to renew them. If The Information continues as good as it is though, I might have to buy a copy for myself.

Hope you all are having a good weekend with lots of reading!