Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart
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Book Reviews of Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So
Book Review: Crapperland, only more so
Summary: 2 Stars
The author describes his main character as "a thoroughly modern young woman in a society rather like Britain and the US in the early sixties."
His interpretation of how such a person thinks and talks is so distracting. It is like reading Nancy Drew mixed with Donna Reed dialogue. The main character writes in her diary with sentences like "Oh, Diary Dearest" and follows with other nauseating dialogue with her parents. It made me want to throw the book across the room. I seriously considered not reading it after the first few pages.
In her diary entries, she is merging terms together that are new to her. For instance "Planiturth" for "planet Earth." When one is describing complex mathematic concepts, there is no need to add mumbo jumbo like that. The concepts are alfready difficult to grasp, without having to sort what she is referring to. I don't see the value of doing this.
The mathematics writing is adequate for the most part. The concepts were easy for me to understand. And these are rather complex concepts. I studied no further than calulus in school, so not a good deal of foreknowledge is needed. Although a lot of patience is needed. He makes several contradictory statments. "The red ball got bigger and bigger until she could only see a small part of it." If it is getting bigger, why is she seeing less of it? All things considered he would have been better off just writing a math book, rather than trying to make it into a crappy, cutesy story. He had a lot of hubris to think he could stay on par with the original classic.
Book Review: Good try, but failed miserably
Summary: 2 Stars
The first person narrative was refreshing to read at the beginning, and the adventure-like storyline was a welcome deviation from other popular math books, at least that was what I thought at the beginning... Apparently the author is better at mathematics than writing, and his ideas of following the writing style of "Flatland" quickly gets old. The book is filled with supposedly "amusing" dialogues between the main characters of the story very intrusive. These dialogues add little value towards the goal of the book, namely explaining the mathematical ideas to non-mathematicians. Sometimes I even found them distracting. After the first 2 chapters, I found myself often skipping over pages of the book (filled with dull dialogues that only the author might find interesting) and jumping over to the conclusion directly. May be because so many pages are wasted by the "story" and "dialogues" instead of discussing interesting mathematics, the mathematical ideas in the book often lack in-depth explanations and are not fully developed. But given the broad agenda the author set out for himself, this seem to be rather inevitable.
I would not recommend this book to others.
Book Review: Unimaginative and nowhere near Flatland
Summary: 2 Stars
The book advertised as a sequel to Flatland but lacks everything Flatland has.There is basically no plot, except some bare bone stuff to lead from one explanation of dimensional concepts to the next (what is intended to hold the semi-essays together is Vikkie Line a grand-grand-child of Abotts A.Sphere from Flatland ... Vikkie emerges into Spaceland and meets Space-Hopper who explains things line n-dimensions or n-fractional dimensions, etc.)
The explanations are bit like essays, their style somewhere between childlike and the stuff you read in mass market science magazines.
Now and then the auther manages some invent some witty and funny play of words, especially when it comes to the characters, so you can't help but smile in a couple of places.
So the book may be ok if you are not from a technical profession and looking some easy to read math and science articles, e.g. to read a chapter on the bus each day, and if you do not expect any useful plot.
But nontheless, the book comes nowhere near Flatland. Compared to that it makes the impression of just having been stiched togeteher from a couple of magazine essays.
Book Review: Literature that makes me grind my teeth
Summary: 1 Stars
In this book agonizingly simple theories and bits of logic are spun into a web of mixed metaphors and frustrating wordplay that is tedious, confusing, incessant, and causes the reader to fixate and break his or her reading 'stride' every other sentance to translate into "Planiturthian".Entire chapters are devoted to simple mathmatical theories I recall from high-school algebra, which could be described to conclusion over the course of a brief paragraph (such as tacking an extra dimension onto a geometrical equation). After reading the first paragraph of any section and translating all the gibberish, your mind will leap to the logical conclusion about seven pages before the author does.
This book offers little educational or entertaining rewards. Reading it is more of a test of determination.
Book Review: Tries too hard-
Summary: 1 Stars
A lame attempt at hyper-cuteness. One of the strengths of the original Flatland was its timelessness, and universality, even with its topical satire. This sequel is dumbed down to the point of being nearly unreadable. Maybe this will seem quaint in a hundred years- I can wait. If it's ever made into a film, Moon Zappa would be ideal- "like, fer shure."