Books I've Been Reading

The Savage Stone Age (Horrible Histories) by Terry Deary

This book gives a very funny overview of the Stone Age. I learned that Neanderthals used to suck out the brains of other Neanderthals! I also learned that Stone Age people used to bury their dead (after a while) in burrows. They used to capture mammoths by making them run into tar pits. They also used to kill bison by making them run over cliffs. (Poor bison!) The book has some very funny cartoons and it should delight audiences of any age.



Number Freak: From 1 to 200: The Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed by Derrick Niederman


Number Freak is about numbers and all their interesting nooks and crannies. It informed me that Franklin D. Roosevelt was afraid of the number 13 and that in a 9x9 Sudoku grid; no puzzle with fewer than 16 givens (number clues) can produce a unique solution. I was also amazed by the de Bruijn cycle (it's made up of 16 ones and zeroes). I am still reading this book.



The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and the audiobook narrated by Jim Weiss (both unabridged)
I read the entire Wind in the Willows in two days while listening to the audiobook. It's about a toad's best friends who try to cure his addiction for motor cars. They failed but he got into an adventure that eventually cured him of it. The book was extremely good and I'm sure it will charm audiences everywhere.