Reviews for Canon A Whirligig Tour of Th Beautiful Basics of Science

The average rating for Canon A Whirligig Tour of Th Beautiful Basics of Science based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-12-10 00:00:00 Chad Koch Reading The Canon, A Chronology: Chapter One: "Oh, interesting. I'd never thought about it that way before. Ha ha, clever." *giggles* Chapter Two: "I had forgotten about that!" *feels superior for remembering the basics of probability* *chuckles at a drawn out word play* Chapter Three: "Huh, that's neat." (100th bad pun.) *crickets* Chapter Four: "I can't see the science for all of the terrible 'funny jokes'." Chapter Five: *feels the need to assault someone* Chapter Six: "YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY BE SERIOUS. WHO TOLD YOU TO WRITE LIKE THIS? HAVE YOU NO SELF RESPECT?" Chapter Seven: "YOU MADE THAT SCIENCE FACT UP SO YOU COULD FORCE THAT PUN. DON'T THINK I'M NOT ON TO YOU." Chapter Eight: *brain erases all previous scientific knowledge in self-defense, hoping to make the book end* Chelsea: *gives up, FINALLY* The science content was fascinating - broken down, but not dumbed down - and the scientists quoted were interesting and witty. The writing was atrocious, and made me want to stab people, starting with the author. The book gets an extra star for putting the very well done chapter on probability up front, so I could get through it before I began to hate the very existence of the universe for leading to the study of science and thus the writing of this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-04-06 00:00:00 Lucio Marchioro Annoying is the fairest word I could come up with to describe The Canon after suffering through it for these past weeks. In fact, this is easily the most annoying book I've ever read, not because the science is poor or the topics contrived. In fact, the subject areas Angier chooses to describe are somewhat intuitive and logically ordered (for the most part). She just has this writing style that, well... it just makes me want to scream. "Peppers" isn't even the appropriate word. She sort of... "vomits" alliterative phrases into every possible nook and cranny of her work. Nine out of ten paragraphs (I said paragraphs, not pages or chapters) ends with an exhausting colloquialism, contrived personal experience or mixed metaphor. And ten out of ten of those literary devices is gunked up with painfully clunky alliteration, some of which doesn't even make sense. I don't think you understand how systemic it is though. Therefore, I'm going to patronizingly write the rest of this review in Angier's style to drive the point home. Here goes: My gut tells me the author thinks this syntactical tactic is either intellectually illustrative or seductively scholarly, like James Bond giving a Powerpoint presentation, but with slightly less ass slapping. It would be valuable if these stylistic stutters were better thought out or perhaps just better spread out across this accursed anthology. But they're not. They're uncomfortably packed together like the reliably rude commuters crammed onto the N train during my mundane morning migration to work. There is value in this book though, and that is the actual science. Unfortunately, it stands stoic and silent, drowned out by the ostensibly clever but officious and indefensible affectations we readers are brought to bear. To recapitulate my reticence and perhaps to highlight this haphazard heads-up: It's like a mighty mastodon masticated a healthy handful of diamonds and then defecated onto my lawn. Sure there are some gems in there, but I'd rather stay poor than fervently forage such feces. Don't read it.