"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read." Umberto Eco

Started sometime in 2025. Finished 1/1/26.

Picked this up in response to Jon Bois' awesome docuseries about the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable.

My husband approved in particular of the scenes with all the dogs fetching the splintered telegraph equipment out of Trinity Bay, the whale that almost ate the cable one time (described as a "ponderous mass") and "Captain Otter of the Porcupine."

Started 1/2/26. Finished ?.

Started sometime in 2025. Finished ?.

One of those books I never finished as a kid. Just as well, because I fast-forwarded over the historical politics parts, which you sort of need to understand the plot.

Started sometime in 2025. Finished ?.

Ah, Pynchon, the reason I installed Wiktionary on my phone. I could not possibly hope to keep track of what's going on in this book without making a zillion notes in the margins.

In particular: On page 143 appears the expression

$$N{e}^{-m}\sum _{k=0}^{m-1}\frac{m^k}{k\mathrm{!}}$$

This is the CDF of a Poisson distribution with rate parameter $m$. $N$ is a total number of Poisson events. In this case, V-2 bombs.

Pynchon actually lifted this from a 1946 publication in an actuarial science journal. Clarke, R.D. (1946) ‘An application of the Poisson distribution’, Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 72(3), pp. 481–481. doi:10.1017/S0020268100035435. I knew he was a dork but you'd think bro would cite his sources. Maybe that is more David Foster Wallace's style. Says the girl who made sure her website can handle nested footnotes.

I think this formula is beautiful. $e^{-m}$ stretches off to infinity in a way that the summation wants to do, strains to do, but cannot, any more than Zeno's tortoise; and it does so in less space than the summation ever could.