Category: Book Review

Recently, my dad has started to bring home books about math, except with things to make it more palatable to younger people, like my sister and I. To be honest, I don’t read them too much because of the complicated language that they use, but this one was a lot easier to use, and it is funny. I have not read the whole book yet, but by reading the first two sections (How to think like a mathematician, and Geometry) I can tell it will be a good read. One thing that Ben talks about earlier in the book is something called Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe. There is one big board, and then smaller ones within the boxes. Where the first person plays on a smaller board, you go to that respective box on the big one and then play, moving the other person to where you put yours on the small one, and so on. (If you don’t get my horrible explanation, go to the link above and the author of the book will tell you how to do it better.) But the whole point of showing the more complicated version of our simple way to settle something was to show the reader that humans learn more by making new versions of something than making something completely different. Also, making it ultimate adds a strategic part to it as well. You have to plan out everywhere that you go. Aside from Tic Tac Toe, this book also talks about probability. Orlin believes that you should think of the long run, in which there would be less uncertainties in the probabilities. A lot of people think of the lottery when they hear the word probability, so the author of this book made more than one chapters dedicated to that. One of my favorite chapters was the ten types of people you would meet in a line for a lottery ticket. I’m not going to spoil that part of it for you, because it is so funny, but I can give you an example. One of the people is the Dreamer. You can already tell what this person is going to do. They hope for everything, without even looking at the chance that they might not even get anything.

I know I haven’t told you readers a lot about the book, but like you, I have not read the book long enough to tell you. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. If you did, please read my other posts on this website. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Another book that I read over the summer is called Waste of Space. This book is about a family living on a moon base to test out the conditions. Obviously, this story is set in the future, but there is nothing too different than what there is now.

I got attracted to this book because I personally like the author, Stuart Gibbs, a whole lot. He writes amazing realistic fiction stories and other types as well. The main character of this book is Dashiell Gibson, a boy who just turned 13. All he wants for his birthday is a peaceful, quiet day, but something entirely different happens. The story starts with his dad taking him outside on to the moon surface to play catch. Dash had only been on the surface a few times, and he nearly died on most of them. Still, this was a big experience for him. Dash has a little sister and he was afraid to wake her up and make her want to come too. However, Nina (the commander) made them stop right away. But then, Lars Sjolberg was poisoned with cyanide in his lutefisk. Lutefisk is a dish made of Whitefish and Lye. It is a Nordic delicacy. But Lars was the only one who ate lutefisk on the ship. But anyway, everyone thought he was subject to a murder attempt. Miraculously, though, he was not killed by the poison.

Dashiell had previously solved a murder mystery behind Nina’s back, but this time Nina wanted him to do it for her. Even though Dash’s parents said that he was too young to find it out on his own, Nina threatened him with making his family go home later than normal if he doesn’t help. This was a very hard challenge for Dash because he could not rule out anyone as a suspect. This was proven because only a few people on the ship could stand Lars. His family. No one on the ship liked them at all. They were all sulky that they could not go home. Apparently, they paid a lot of money to be a space colonist. Dash had a knack for putting things together the way other people could not. And in the end, he found out exactly who that person was. However, if I told you who did it, that would ruin the whole book for you. I hope you guys enjoyed that summary of Waste of Space by Stuart Gibbs.