The First Sentence Reader: **Highest Recommendation

Showing posts with label **Highest Recommendation. Show all posts

Sunday, October 19, 2025

Asimov's Guide to Science

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to Science. New York : Basic Books 1960. Print.

First Sentences:

Almost in the beginning was curiosity....There comes a point where the capacity to receive, store, and interpret message from the outside world may outrun sheer necessity. An organism may for the moment be sated with food, and there may, at the moment, be no danger in sight. What does it do then?....[The] higher organisms, at least, still show a strong instinct to explore the environment. Idle curiosity we may call it. ....The more advanced the brain, the greater the drive to explore....[Curiosity] for its simplest definition is "the desire to know."

Description:

This is a first for The First Sentence Reader. I am recommending a book that: 1) I have not finished reading yet and therefore will only review the first 100-page section; and 2) It is a book I don't expect anyone else to read (although I would hope someone out there would be interested enough in some content to at least flip through it and maybe even get caught up enought o read a section or two - or the entire book as I will certainly do.)

Behold, I enthusiastically recommend Isaac Asimov and his thrilling, all-encompassing, wonderful, 945-page Asimov's Guide to Science.

As a very poor student of any science class but still an interested outsider, I finally wanted to try to understand the world around me. Asimov to the rescue! In his Guide to Science, Asimov covers in separate sections and chapters:

What is science?
The Physical Science (The Universe, Earth, Atmosphere, Elements, Energy, etc.)
The Biological Sciences (Molecules, Proteins, Cells, Microorganisms, The Body, The Mind, etc.)

Already I can sense your feeling of being overwhelmed by this vast amount of information. Maybe you've never really been interested in science in general. But Isaac Asimov is the most gentle, understanding, clear-thinking, and readable non-fiction author you will ever find. Pick a random subject in any field of science that interests you and he will give you the background, historic figures of relevant scientists in this field and their discoveries, the current advancements, and the plans for the future.

And it is all delivered in easy-to-read sentences chock full of fascinating details that pull you along from paragraph to paragraph until you find you have read 20 pages (or even more) on this scientific topic - and miraculously you've understood it. And you'll also find that you cannot wait to bend the ears of friends and family with fascinating scientific tidbits from Asimov about the world around us.

So as I said, I have only started this tome, finishing the first 100+ pages on "What Is Science" and "The Universe." Both were absolutely riveting. What did I learn?

What separates humans from most other animals and drives science is curiosity, the "need to know" and to find answers;
How to measure great distances, such as miles from the Earth to the Moon, to the Sun, to other planets, and far-flung stars as well as determine planetary and other astronomical orbits;
With the naked eye, we can see about 6,000 stars on a clear night;
Galileo's telescope showed for the first time that the Milky Way was composed of millions of stars and was flat-shaped;
A light year is 5.88 trillion miles, i.e., 186,282 miles per second (the speed of light) x 31,536,00 (the number of seconds in a year);
The unsolved question whether the universe is "evolutionary" (continually expanding and contracting), or whether it is "steady-state" (density of galaxies remains the same);
A nova is not the death of a star but simply its sudden expansion (sometimes "a millionfold in less that a day") before settling back into its usual brightness;
Clear explanations and examples of white dwarfs, red giants, super novas, comets, quasars, interstellar gas, dust clouds, telescopes, spectrum photography, radio waves, and so much more)

Hope I haven't bored you already. If so, I am very chagrined to have done so. For me, it's so exciting to finally be able to understand scientific terms and the descriptions of the universe I see or read about daily, and in words and examples I can comprehend. I found every page, almost every paragraph, fascinating, informative, and very entertaining. And although I have a lot of the book to go, I cannot wait to dip into its treasures with Asimov as my patient, understanding, and wise guide.

[P.S. I just noticed Asimov wrote an updated and expanded version of his Guide to Science (see below). This new text was written 22 years after the original Guide, so covers new discoveries in fields of computers, AI, robotics, astronomy, biology, etc. Looks like I have my lifetime To Be Read list filled up for the near future. FR]

[N]o one can really feel at home in the modern world and judge the nature of its problems -- and possible solutions to those problems -- unless he has some intelligent notion of what science is up to. But beyond this, initiation into the magnificent world of science brings great esthetic satisfaction, inspiration to youth, fulfillment of the desire to know, and a deeper appreciation of the wonderful potentialities and achievements of the human mind.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's New Guide to Science.

Updated version (written 25 years later in 1984) of the original Guide to Science, and covers new discoveries in physics, robotics, biology, astronomy, computers, artificial intelligence, and other fields.

Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 480 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Cowboys Are My Weakness

Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness. Berkeley, CA : Washington Square Press 1992. Print.

First Sentences:

When he says "Skins of blankets?" it will take you a moment to realize that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two -- was it hours or days or weeks?

Description:

I admit I first picked up Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness, simply based on the title. But after only the first few sentences and paragraphs, I was deeply hooked by the relationship descriptions conveyed in her deft, personal writing style.

These are stories of love, each narrated by a woman who isn't afraid to take chances with questionable men and enter into challenging situations. Her writing is so packed with penetrating evaluations of her environment and the people she encounters, honest hesitations over choices to be made, questionable decisions settled on, and then unblinking acceptance of consequences that I felt author Houston was telling deeply-felt episodes from her own life to me, her confidential friend.

Houston's stories include:

Hunting with a boyfriend for six weeks as he leads paying customers to locate, shoot, and bring back trophy big horn sheep ... and she hates hunting, never having ever even shot a gun much less killed any animal. Not to mention the miles slogging on her belly to sneak up on unsuspecting sheep;

Deciding to winter camp in -30 degree weather to ward off the blues, despite never having camped in sub-zero weather, having poor equipment, and only two freezing dogs as companions;
Rafting down an impossible river that the local park ranger said was too high to run, leaving at night and unable to see the killer rapids throughout their adventure, aware that only the day before on the same river a similar boat had capsized, killing one experienced rafter;
Watching her best friend deal with repeated cancer diagnosis; hosting a mother who doesn't like her boyfriend's tattoos or lifestyle; tending a horse with a lame tendon (after hitting a gopher hole while she was riding and being thrown over his head and concussed); and working her way through cowboy after cowboy, each with great affection for her, wonderful physical attractiveness and attentiveness, but each carrying a warning sign of some aspect (previous girlfriend he can't leave, possible pregnancy decisions, and just plain old reluctance to stick around and change his lifestyle) that always threaten her deep feelings for each man.

It's her writing that is supurb: thoughtful, concise, emotional, and always honest to her inner most feelings. Whether describing her connections to her dogs, horses, men, or women friends, her stream-of-consciousness narration is always clear and open, revealing her deepest and sometimes not so deep feelings on every page.

There are multiple relationship decisions facing her protagonist in every story, such as:

She said the wild ones were the only ones worth having and that I had to let me do whatever it took to keep him wild. She said I wouldn't love him if he ever gave in, and the harder I looked at my life, the more I saw a series of men--wild in their own way--who ...I tamed and made them dull as fence posts and left each one for someone wilder than the last;
I thought about all the years I'd spent saying love and freedom were mutually exclusive and living my life as though they were exactly the same thing;
There was something about the prairie--it wasn't where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn't even stop living under that big sky. When I was a little girl....I used to be scared of the flatness because I didn't know what was holding all the air in.
After the first week in Alaska I began to realize that the object of sheep hunting was to intentionally deprive yourself of all the comforts of normal life.
[On waking up after surviving a -30 night of winter camping] The morning sunshine was like a present from the gods. What really happened, of course, is that I remembered about joy.

I absolutely loved every story, character, setting, and writing style in each of these short stories. It's one of the few books that I could pick up immediately and re-read, certainly one title that will go into my Forever Library collection.

I sincerely hope you pick it up and enjoy the trials and joys of relationships, whether with men, women, or animals, as I have and will continue to do in the future.

A relationship, you've decided, is not something you need like a drug, but a journey, a circumstance, a choice you might make on a particular day.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces.

Wonderfully powerful, personal, and highly descriptive essays of rural life on a sheep ranch and other very small town locales in Wyoming.

Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Siegfried Sassoon. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: The Memoirs of George Sherston. New York: Coward, McCann. 1930. Print.

First Sentences:

I have said that Spring arrived late in 1916, and that up in the trenches opposite Mametz it seemed as though Winter would last for ever. I also stated that as for me, I had more or less made up my mind to die because in the circumstances there didn't seem anything else to be done.

Description:

Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, has been considered the greatest book about World War I ever written. Sassoon, was a writer of dreamy poetic verse until the War came. Then, at age 28, he became an second lieutenant in the British cavalry and sent to the front lines in France where he soon became noted for his compassion for the men serving under him.

Details abound as readers experience every aspect of war through the eyes of British Officer Georege Sherston, Sassoon's fictionalized version of himself. Sherston/Sassoon watch and enter into battles both with his men or alone, with bullets and bombs all around him. The barb wire he confronts is real in Sherston's depictions, as are the smell of chemicals, gun powder, sickness and death. Truly, readers are taken into the trenches to join Sherston and his men live hour by hour in the trenches.

Well, here I was, and my incomplete life might end any minute; for although the evening air was as quiet as a cathedral, a canister soon came over quite enough to shake my meditations with is unholy crash and cloud of black smoke. A rat scampered across the tin cans and burst sandbags, and trench atmosphere reasserted itself in a smell of chloride of lime.

After the death of a friend, however, Sherston turned into "Mad Jack," looking for vengeance against the Germans through carrying out reckless forays behind lines. He was eventually wounded and sent back to England. There, he contemplated the futility and fraud of war and wrote completely different anti-war poetry.

In real life, while recovering from his wounds, Sassoon refused to return to the War, publishing his statement in "A Soldier's Declaration." Here he protested the sanitized version of the war promoted by the government, and stating his personal reasons for "refusing to serve further in the army." That powerful anti-war letter is published in full here in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Its opening lines are below:

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. ...I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest....

This is the second of three books in Sassoon's fictionalized autobiography series, centering on Sherston, a shy British country gentleman who only knows of horses, cricket, and golf, but finds himself in the trenches of Somme and other battles in the heart of World War I.

Powerful, yet beautifully written very penetrating eye witness account of what Sassoon experienced on the front lines, the confidence, the bravery, the horrid conditions, the disillusionment, and the eventual bitterness that led to Sassoon's future anti-war writings.

For any history buff, you cannot go wrong with this realistic depiction of the men, battles, and conditions of World War I. Highest recommendation.

Next evening, just before stand-to, I was watching a smouldering sunset and thinking that the sky was one of the redeeming features of the war.

Happy reading.

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage.

The classic narrative novel of the dreams, fears, and disillusionment of a common soldier fighting in the United States Civil War.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Cabin

Hutchison, Patrick. Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman. New York: St. Martin's 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

I bought the cabin for $7,500 from a guy on Craigslist. He was a tugboat captain. His name was Tony. Here's why.* (*Footnote: Why I bought the cabin, not why Tony was a tugboat captain or why he was named Tony.)

Description:

Patrick Hutchison, author of Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, at age 30, found himself in a frustrating rut. He had a decent job as a copy editor with decent pay and some interesting travel. But working in a cubicle under florescent lights, turning out copy that may never be read, he longed for something else

Years after leaving college with an intent to roam the earth telling the stories of beautiful lunatics, I was in an office creating email template to sell advertising to plumbers and wondering how I'd ended up here.

He thought that maybe if he could get away to the woods, to the environment he grew up, that would be a distraction and give him a purpose to his life that would somehow provided satisfaction.

Eventually, he found his answer while perusing Craigslist (during slow work hours) for cabins. There, among the pricey, fully-outfitted houses, he found a very brief note for a rustic cabin for sale 40 minutes away from his home in Seattle. Driving up that same day, he saw the "rustic" (i.e. dilapidated, falling-down) 10' x 12' structure that resembled "a big chicken coop" or kids' clubhouse. It was on an isolated road lined with abandoned buses and unoccupied cabins that were once meth houses and squatters' shelters. The cabin had no running water, electricity, heat, cell service, or Wi-Fi, but to Hutchison, it was his dream.

Like any new parent with a hideous baby, my eyes glazed over the flaws. At that moment, I only saw what I wanted....I saw only potential, and I saw a version of myself that was capable of making it better. Not great, necessarily, but better....Most importantly, I felt the pull of something a bit bigger, a grand pursuit, a thing to dive into that was different and new and exciting.

One problem: he knew nothing about building, carpentry, or even power tools. The only time he had used an electric drill was to hang a painting, ending up making multiple holes in the wall, chipping plaster, and making a shambles of everything. With this cabin restoration, what could possible go wrong, or through some great luck actually succeed?

Undaunted, he bought the cottage immediately and began obsessively searching YouTube videos and any other source of info to find the best, cheapest tools, materials, cabin restoration techniques, outhouses, foundations, driveway drains, and everything else imaginable. With friends (who also knew nothing about tools or building but brought plenty of beer), on his very first weekend they somehow built an outhouse, fortified the broken deck, cut the front door so it could swing open over the leaning house (leaving a large enough gap at the bottom for birds could walk into the house, and rigged up a Coleman stove for heat and soup. These became his cottage staples, along with plenty of beer and whiskey.

All this happens in the first few pages of Cabin, so I'll leave the rest of this delightfully satisfying book to your imagination. But this narration is not just a laughable series of efforts by a hapless idiot. Hutchison is a serious, dedicated, albeit unskilled worker who figures things out on the fly, Yes, he make some (many) quirky mistakes along the way. But all the while, he enjoys the feeling of personal satisfaction he gains with building something with his own hands (and yes, some power tools), while experiencing the beauty and silence in a gorgeous section of forest.

[After buying his first tool, a power drill] Climbing into bed that night, I felt a glow that reminded me of Christmas nights growing up, falling asleep to the reality of new toys and the knowledge that the future held many, many days of good times.

While the restoration of the cabin is the foundation of the book, this is also a stream-of-consciousness memoir of Hutchison's personal restoration journey to self-confidence through problem-solving of daunting tasks along with his deep love for the cabin itself, and what it represented in his life.

At times, it felt like the cabin and I were partners in a sort of joint self-improvement project. When the cabin was all fixed up, maybe I would be too.

I don't often whole-heartily recommend a book to all First Sentence Readers, but Cabin is the exception. I hope that everyone reads this absorbing and delightful book. It is at once funny, thoughtful, energetic, foolish, emotional, and triumphant, all in the backdrop of a glorious forest setting full of hikes, trees, snow, stars, and quiet. There are times of rollicking, deep friendships as well as plenty of solitude for dreams and simply enjoying life in an isolated cottage of your own building. Highest recommendation for all readers.

With no one but the trees to judge us and a fistful of Band-Aids to keep everything in order, we'd pick up where we left off as kids, making forts, learning how to build things again.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Wallace, Don. The French House:An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All.

Author Marshall and his wife, Mindy, both budding writers living in New York City, fall in love with the small French island of Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany where the architecture has remained the same since the 1700s. Their "brand-new ruin" is an eyesore, but a piece of history that needs tender (i.e., specific and expensive) attention. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The Keeper of Lost Causes

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Keeper of Lost Causes. New York: Dutton. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

She scratched her fingertips on the smooth walls until they bled, and pounded her fists on the thick panes until she could no longer feel her hands. At least ten times she had fumbled her way to the steel door and stuck her fingernails in the crack to try to pry it open, but the door could not be budged, and the edge was sharp.

Description:

I'll start this book recommendation with a caveat: This book is not for everyone. Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes is a Scandanavian noir thriller, full of exciting action, fascinating characters, and can-put-down writing style. But like other books in this genre, it depicts some shocking plotlines, stomach-churing situations and pccasionally graphic violence. So, if this type of reading is off-putting to you, stop reading now and move on to another book.

However, if you are drawn to police procedurals, gripping writing, Scandanavian settings, and flawed, complex characters (both good and evil), then Adler-Olsen is your author. The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first of his ten novels in the Department Q series featuring the Copenhagen homicide police division assigned to take on unsolved murder and missing person cases.

It's a hopeless assignment for Carl Morck, the abrasive detective who, since no one in the Homicide force could get along with him, is kicked downstairs to to tiny basement office and a one-person staff named Assad. Carl is prepared to nap and quietly avoid any work until the five-year-old missing person case of Magete Lynggard is randomly selected to appease his boss that he is actually working on something.

Magete was traveling with her younger brother, a mute, damaged young man who, along with Magete, had survived a terrible car crash that killed their parents and several other people. When her ferry was unloading, Magete's car was left untouched and she was nowhere to be found. Because she was a noted political figure, news interest in her spiked for awhile until it was concluded that probably she had either fallen overboard or committed suicide.

But as we read in the opening paragraph, she is very much alive, but trapped in a hopelessly impenetrable prison, in complete darkness, with only an occasional voice over a PA system to fill the silence. Why she is there and what her outcome will be are a mystery until the final pages.

What drives this book and others in the Department Q series are the characters. Detective Morck has become deeply uninterested in his job after an unexpected shoot-out where one of his partners was killed and another paralized by a stray bullet. Assad, Morck's assistant, slowly shows special talents that take him away from his copying, filing, and cleaning jobs to providing valuable insight and help with the Lynggard investigation. Then there are themembers of the homicide division: some brilliant, many incompetent, all of them to be avoided by Morck at all costs.

This is a book that is impossible to put down. I read it during every spare moment, and late into the night, always regretting whenever I had to stop. It is thrilling on every page, providing questions and, little by little, possible answers as Carl begins to peel away confusing layers of this long-dead case.

Highest recommendation for lovers of thrillers, procedurals, unsolved mysteries, and absorbing characters.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. Locked In.

Carl Morck, fresh off of solving the nail-gun murder case, is thrown into jail when a suitcase full of money and drugs is found in his attic. Can Morck and the Department Q team unravel the reasons behind this situation and get him out of prison before he is murdered by one of the inmates he had put into the same jail? (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Special Post - Holiday Gift Books

Description:

I know it is a bit early for the holidays, but since I am taking a break from writing new book recommendations until after the New Year, I thought people might be looking for interesting titles to read themselves or give to others over the gift-giving season.

Below are some of my favorites with links to my reviews. Every one of these I highly recommend. I hope a few will catch your interest and work their way onto your shelves for reading or for sharing with friends and family.

Happy reading.

Fred

See More Recommendations

(and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader)

________________________

Fiction

Animals

Horse (historical fiction) - Geraldine Brooks

Remarkable Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

West With Giraffes (historical fiction) - Lynda Rutledge

Humor

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons