What If?

The best way to get a feel for whether or not you'd like Randall Munroe's What If book is to check out the blog that it's based on. Given that the blog is available for free and most of the book is a reproduction of the blog, it may be a little silly to buy the book. But I enjoyed reading it.

It makes an excellent coffee table book, something people can pick up and flip through and learn something new and interesting. The book also organizes the questions so that some of them build on each other quite naturally, which adds a little something extra that isn't available in the blog. But mostly I enjoyed reading the book because, frankly, I prefer books.

I spend all day at work staring at a computer screen. When I'm at home relaxing, I'd rather not be looking at a back-lit screen. It's hard on my eyes. It confines me to my office (okay, I could read on the tablet, but then I'm worrying about battery life). So even though that blog has been available for free for years, and I heard about it right when I started, I didn't get around to reading almost any of it until Kevin received the book for Christmas. Maybe I should go back and read more of the actual blog now. Maybe I'll just wait until the sequel comes out.

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