Category: Thinking Turf

Have you ever felt that curious while looking up at the night sky? The idea that we are so puny in the vastness of space doesn’t make you wonder sometimes about the mysteries that lie beyond our understanding? That’s exactly the idea Marcus du Sautoy explores in The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science, first published in 2016. He has tried to explore the limits of human knowledge. And somehow, it’s both humbling and electrifying, which makes the book so fascinating to read.

I picked up The Order of Time because I figured, a 158-page book might talk about time in terms of cause and effect, the default way we tend to understand it. You know, things happen, one after another, and we measure that with clocks. But nope. Rovelli has something else in mind.

If you’re even a little bit curious about how a brain builds itself before we’re born, Zero to Birth: How The Human Brain Is Built is a book you’ll want to spend time with. It was first published in 2022 and is written by neuroscientist William A. Harris. What makes it so compelling is how clearly it lays out the stages of brain development without dumbing things down.

In this book, Haruki Murakami takes his readers to a journey where they may experience a thin line between forgotten memories and existential musings. The City and Its Uncertain Walls was first released in April 2023 but it was all set for English reading audience in November 2024. The book is built on a short story written by the author himself in 1980s.

“Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime” is a non-fiction work authored by American theoretical physicist Sean M. Carroll. It was first published in 2019. The book talks about the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, with a focus on the Many-Worlds interpretation.

Sally Adee in “We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body’s Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds” takes us into our inner most layer which is but a hidden circuitry that powers nearly all forms of life. Even the tiniest cellular functions are governed by intricate electrical signals. This bioelectricity influences everything from our health to our consciousness. This book made its debut in 2023, and I’ve been jotting down my thoughts on it for the past couple of months. Today, I finally decided it was time…

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter was first published in 1979. Famously known as GEB, the book touches upon everything – consciousness, self-reference, computer science, formal systems, proofs, mathematics, abstract structures, codes, language, music, storytelling, conversations etc. At the beginning, I’d like to mention that I’m not qualified to review this book, as I lack a background in mathematics. Despite my difficulty in understanding complex concepts, from what little I’ve grasped, I believe this is one of the most profound works I’ve encountered so far.

Dark Matter explores the many-worlds theory and navigates parallel dimensions. Written by Blake Crouch in 2016, it’s an engaging book that one can quickly get lost in. I finished reading it in just two days while traveling.