On amazon.uk.co best seller list as of Friday 6Aug at 5PM (GMT-8)

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/static/-/books/amazon-bestsellers/ref=cs_nav_sn_4/202-5121337-2949434

 

It is topped only a diet book and the DaVinci Code

 

Penrose has been #4 for most of the day and by late afternoon had moved ahead past one of the diet books, into 3rd place.

 

This means he is ahead of Michael Moore (#6) and Lance Armstrong (#15)

and the Alexander McCall Smith lady-detective novels.

Does anyone know of good online reviews of the book besides

these?:

 

from the Statesman, Times byline

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=24&theme=&usrsess=1&id=50300

 

 

from last Sunday's "Scotsman"

http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=849142004

Today, Saturday, Penrose started off #3 but slipped, and is now

back at #10 place on amazon.co.uk bestseller list

 

still pretty good for a book of that type

I'm a bit confused by #5 on the list: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Is a book about punctuation really selling well?

Yes. It is rather funny. Many of the sentences can mean two different things, depending on how you read it.

 

Like "Eats, shoots & leaves". You can eat shoots and leaves, the plant parts, or you can come into a restaurant, eat, shoot someone, and leave.

Or the Panda version, which is dirtier.

Well?

 

what is the Panda version?

 

I guess a Panda eats bamboo shoots and leaves

so this has possibilities, and maybe it is offensive too,

so you had better tell us Sayonara before

Capn expires of curiosity

Use your imagination.

Penrose is down to 12th place

Why do you care so much about his book?

Wait til you see the book Cap'n

 

In the meantime, have you read the reviews?

 

from the Statesman, Times byline

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=24&theme=&usrsess=1&id=50300

 

 

from last Sunday's "Scotsman"

http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=849142004

I will obtain this book and master it!

I will obtain this book and master it!

 

Great ambition!

It is not a popular-written book, apparently.

Today it is down to #16 on amazon bestseller list.

I believe a lot is that he shows you the formulas and equations,

which turns some readers off. But I like that aspect of it.

If it lacked equations and formulae, I would burn it in protest. If I wanted to take things on faith, I'd believe in God and alchemy.

Bummer.. they do not appear to have it in the US? I searched Amazon here with the ISBN and found nothing.

Bummer.. they do not appear to have it in the US? I searched Amazon here with the ISBN and found nothing.

 

If I had it to do over I would order from Amazon.co in the UK.

Postage from UK to US is not all that bad and i would get the

cheap UK price (21 pounds, less than 40 bucks) and I would already

have the book by now.

 

Instead I found a US supplier who claimed they had it for $54

and I ordered it two weeks ago and still dont have it. they discovered

it wasnt in their warehouse yet and put the order on hold.

When it finally comes out in US it is likely, I am told, to be

more expensive than the 21 pound price in UK.

 

trouble is, I at least am not used to ordering from UK

my wife has done it a bunch and it's worked for what she's ordered.

the atlantic ocean may not be such a big obstacle except in the mind

I have never been very impressed with Penrose.

 

Weinberg's books on QFT are good though (although he has some funny conventions).

I have never been very impressed with Penrose.

 

Weinberg's books on QFT are good though (although he has some funny conventions).

 

Different genre. To make an obvious point,

Weinberg's "The Quantum Theory of Fields" is not a mass audience book and the set costs 120 pound stirling.

 

Penrose "The Road to Reality" is rather mass audience and costs 21 pound stirling at Amazon

 

I just checked to see how it is selling and it was now down to #32 place

 

so it has had its moment of fame and now all one can say is that it is on the Top 100 chart.

 

who will use "The Road to Reality"? Smart highschool students. Amateurs who got interested in theoretical physics and cosmology late in life and cant drop everything and go back to grad school for a different major.

 

It has a lot of pictures and makes a lot of sense----it is more or less understandable without going knee-deep in math.

At the end he waffles about future directions in physics, what to expect from string, from LQG, from his own pet twistors. he is outspoken but indefinite, if that makes any sense.