{"id":26646,"date":"2020-08-05T12:50:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T17:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=26646"},"modified":"2020-08-05T08:51:27","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T13:51:27","slug":"book-report-how-to-by-randall-munroe-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/book-report-how-to-by-randall-munroe-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>How To<\/i> by Randall Munroe (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/howto.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">I bought this book at Books-a-Million <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/26\/good-book-hunting-june-22-2020-calvins-books-and-books-a-million\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in June<\/a>.  I haven&#8217;t made a goal of reading the books I bought in Branson this year (unlike <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/01\/good-book-hunting-may-29-2019-calvins-books-branson-missouri\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">last year<\/a>, when I read all five ending with <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/04\/book-report-herschend-family-values-as-told-by-d-r-jacobsen-2017\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Herschend Family Values<\/em><\/a>).  But we bought a copy of this book for the boys as well, and the oldest spotted on my to-read stack (those volumes from Branson this year are still stacked on the floor atop the box of books I inherited from my most recently passed aunt) and recommended the book.<\/p>\n<p>Well, he hasn&#8217;t read <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/06\/book-report-what-if-by-randall-munroe-2014\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>What If?<\/em><\/a>, another book with a similar premise.  Wherein <em>What If?<\/em> the author speculates on crazy questions and works out the math and physics on the prospect, in <em>How To<\/em>, he takes a basic activity like being on time, digging a hole, moving a house, playing piano, and so on and then goes off on a little physics tangent exploration of the possibility.  So the schtick is a little different because he&#8217;s taking things for which we already have a good solution&#8211;leave early, use a backhoe or excavator, buy a player piano&#8211;and goes tangentally off into ridiculous but physics-ally sound answers (or reasons why the answers he chooses are not physics-ally sound).<\/p>\n<p>So a little less engaging than <em>What If?<\/em> from my perspective.<\/p>\n<p>My boys liked it, though.  Enough to recommend I read it sooner rather than later.  Although I&#8217;m not sure how much they appreciated the math and physics in it.  I suspect they liked it because it had a lot of cartoons in it, like their previous favorites Dog Man and Captain Underpants.<\/p>\n<p>I see Munroe has published another book in the interim&#8211;<em>Thing Explainer<\/em>&#8211;that I&#8217;ll watch out for.  I&#8217;m also thinking about getting a copy of <em>What If?<\/em> for that former physics teacher on my gift list.  She might find it a hoot.  Or not.  The key in Christmas gift giving, especially to those with whom you&#8217;ll open gifts in person, is a large number of items so that, hopefully, <em>something<\/em> will delight the recipient.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I bought this book at Books-a-Million in June. I haven&#8217;t made a goal of reading the books I bought in Branson this year (unlike last year, when I read all five ending with Herschend Family Values). But we bought a copy of this book for the boys as well, and the oldest spotted on my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26647,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646\/revisions\/26647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}