Fun Reads by Rich Schram

I read the entirety of Cormac McCarthy’s  All The Pretty Horses . All the way to the book’s depressing end. I know it was a literary best-seller and garnered a movie, but goodness, don’t read it if you want to finish a book with spring in your step and a happy whistle on your lips. I switched to nonfiction, trying  When Einstein Walked With Gödel  by Jim Holt. It didn’t deliver a brain-cleansing escape. Barnes & Noble’s website describes it as “ . . .  an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries.” That description may be a stretch; I suspect some readers might consider the book a cure for insomnia. Call me strange. I plowed through to the last page, and doing so activated some brain cells I thought long dead. Portions of the book drift away from Einstein and atoms. One section examines how the structure of English affects the way American kids learn to count when compared with Chinese child...