Welcome to Litsy!

An informative and often amusing imagining of the lives of mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and scientist Alexander von Humboldt.

With this 4th and final book for the #AwesomeAugust readathon, I met all my stated goals! Thanks to @Andrew65 for hosting!

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

Thank you so very much Fiona - this books looks really fascinating - right up my street! You know me well! I‘ll have to swap notes with your Dad! Hope you and the family are having a lovely day 🎅🏼♥️🎅🏼

So a little bit of chilling time in between sight seeing! My friend recommended this one a while ago, saw it in the bookshop yesterday and figured since the author has lived here it would be fitting to get it now. Shame I am way slower at reading in German though!

This book started off well, but as the book progressed it began to feel a bit disjointed and a sequence of separate incidents within each chapter rather than a sequential progressive storyline. In fact it started to feel a bit like a non-fiction book in a fiction format. Not sorry I read it as there were some interesting points in it but feel it could have been so much better. Interesting that it is on the 1001 books to read before you die list.

Fancied something a bit different so listening to this book which centres around tow famous Germans, the naturalist and explorer Alexander van Rumboldt and the genius mathematician and Physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. Enjoying it so far.

I- not being particularly good in Maths or in love with Science- enjoyed this book about the two geniuses Humboldt and Gauß very much. Both attempted to measure and explore the world in their very own, distinctive ways and left a tremendous mark on scientific standard and progress nowadays. If you want to loose yourself in a simply- but also beautifully told story, go and check out this book, which made Kehlmann famous in 2005.

Highly recommended by others, but it didn't do much for me. Being not much of a beta, the scientific part didn't interest me much, nor did the history of both German scientists. The humor also was wasted on me. So... well written, but I read it mostly diagonally. #1001books

I loved this. Does what it says on the cover ("Here for once is a popular hit as sophisticated as it is engaging" Sunday times). The 2 scientists are wonderful characters, quirky & spring to life on the page. Dry, compassionate sense of humour. Clean writing, w lovely translation by Carol Brown Janeway. I'm keen to read more of Daniel Kehlmann's books now. ???

Writing a novel, said Humboldt, seemed to him the perfect way to capture the most fleeting essence of the present for the future.

Really enjoying this so far! Good pace, witty writing and eccentric characters. 👍

Not my kind of book. It was a book club book and i try to give those book a fair chance, but this I gave 50 pages then bailed. Not many in the book club enjoyed it, but liked the idea of the book.