Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic

I'm still reading, still writing book reviews, still taking that journey. And I read the most amazing book this week - a bound galley, not even published yet, from The Permanent Press. It's called a theory of all things, and I was hooked from the second page.

The first page is emails to and from a young man called Mark. The reader learns he's done something a little out of the ordinary, perhaps embarrassing, but doesn't know what. Then on the second page Mark narrates his own tale. Having been a fairly serious mathematician myself back in the day, I feel like I know him. He's that genius in college who found everything so easy and just had to explain it all, the one who related everything to mathematical theory then wondered why the rest of us seem uninvolved in his great imagining. He's real; he's cute; he's intriguing; and he drives you up the wall.

Marks misadventures had me laughing out loud, his misunderstandings had me cringing for remembered embarrassment, and his theories had me desperate to learn more.

The novel introduces a wonderfully artistic family--painter, writer, photographer, collect of strange things--and every person has their say. The father is falling prey to Alzheimers, and perhaps Mark's theories of entropy make sense of that. But entropy certainly doesn't get the last word in Peggy Leon's novel, and that which falls apart is delightfully rebuilt.

I loved it! And I reviewed it (this is just a taste). And I feel like it truly might have been written just for me.

So I'm reading, I'm writing (even some more chapters of Hemlock, besides book reviews), and I'm even enjoying a foray back into the wonders of Arithmetic (well, mathematics, to be a little more precise). That's got to be good.