wednesday books' labor's lost

Dirichlet: A Mathematical Biography, Uta C. Merzbach. I'm glad there's a biography of Dirichlet out there, and I'm glad to have read this book! That said, Dirichlet was kind of not that interesting a person -- and in particular he was bad at writing home to his family (both in terms of frequency and quality). His in-laws on the other hand are much more interesting, so at least I was glad to spend some time with the Mendelssohn family, and motivated to read more about them! (Exciting moments: the time that Rebecka went into unexpected early labor while staying in Florence, and Fanny and Dirichlet had to serve as midwives while waiting for the doctor to arrive. The time that Rebecka acted as a trusted intermediary in the plot to break Gottfried Kinkel out of prison -- but everybody was very discreet about it afterwards, so we only have hints.) On the math side of things, the book mostly gives technical accounts of what Dirichlet did in his papers, without much contextualization -- I found it (and the final chapter on Dirichlet's legacy) interesting but would not recommend to a general audince. Also the math story and the personal biography didn't really interact much; we don't get much of a sense of how Dirichlet did math (apart from the anecdote that he discovered the Unit Theorem while listenig to music in the Sistine Chapel).

Love's Labor's Lost, William Shakespeare. What a silly play! But also fun. Afterwards carbonel recommended a_t_rain's sequel Love's Labor's Won which is more serious, but also fun. (I'd read it before, but forgotten it mostly!)

Forged, Benedict Jacka. This is book 11 of a 12-book urban fantasy series, so don't start here! I liked the series best around books 4-6 I think, but am finally getting around to finishing it; fortunately I was easily able to jump back in without being too confused; though I might find the protagonist more sympathetic if I remembered better the character arc that brought him where he is. At this point in the series, our protagonist Alex Verus is in a position where he's likely to die in at least five different ways within the next year if not much sooner. Fortunately, at this point in the series, he's leveled up to the point where he's basically a walking Infinite Improbability Drive (ok, not infinite, but able to beat some extremely impressive odds), which means that he's spending this book trying to problem-solve how to stay alive, without too much concern for the collateral damage (which is impressive, and which he does feel bad about when he has the time) or for the fact that his ex-girlfriend is possessed by a creature that is trying to take over the world (he knows it's a problem, but he has other problems to deal with first). Anyway, Jacka writes really good action scenes, so I generally had a good time with this.

Risen, Benedict Jacka. Book 12 of 12 in this series, have only just started -- curious how it will stick the landing!