The loss of a major bookstore like Borders is more than the loss of a big company. It’s the loss to the entire book community, whether you’ve visited a Borders location or not. Bookstores are where many of us continued to pursue our love of books after experiencing that first spark, supporting our favorite writers so they could keep creating new stories for us to get lost in. We save up our money and look around the bookstore, touching the crisp spines of the new books to figure out which new book we’re going to take home with us today. There’s something about opening a brand new book for the first time, which may be why I pick up books I’ve already read in a bookstore just to remember what opening it new was like.

Bookstores are magical, and even as the world transitions to ebooks and the remaining bookstores face competition, the traditional bookstore will always have a place in my heart. Borders, you will be missed.

Maybe I should read a few of those books. As humanities-centered as the list is, it’s a good place to start for someone who doesn’t have a clue about, say, art. Godel, Escher, Bach, the lone math book on the list, has been on my to-read list for years. I’ll get around to reading it one day. Really.

I find myself wondering how many of these books the average person has read in full. I’m willing to bet that most people haven’t read that many unless they study a humanities field in great depth or enjoy nonfiction. How many of these have you read? Is my read count of three high, average, or low?

“Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, [Amy Freeman] felt, ‘nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff.’ She left the store empty-handed.”

So vampires are dark now? They weren’t exactly happy fluffy creatures to start with, but just because a novel has a vampire in it doesn’t make it dark. Look at the Twilight series. It has vampires, and it’s full of lulz and gnashing of teeth from the terrible writing.

Then there’s the sidebar of recommendations. The books I have in the recommendations are excellent, but they’re divided into books for boys and books for girls. And surprise, surprise–I’ve read more books in the so-called boy section than the girl section. Am I the only person who’s amused that she recommended Fahrenheit 451 in an article that is calling for censorship?

But here’s the point the writer of the article doesn’t truly get. She acknowledges the point, sure. But kids gravitate to YA books of the nature she describes to know they’re not alone–in being the funny-looking outcast, in being the only one without a date, in feeling pain and wondering if you’ll ever feel normal again. It’s not just about the tough issues described in the books, even though the reader may be able to relate to those as well on a firsthand level. These dark novels helps kids get through hell and back when they thought they never would, and they come out better thanks to those books.

So never ever stop writing, and never ever stop reading. If that’s not enough, check out the #yasaves hashtag on Twitter, which was trending worldwide last time I checked a few minutes ago. If you’re on Twitter, make your own #yasaves tweet, and mention @wsj in there while you’re at it so they see it.

The idea began in a Dinosaur Comic, and the book came out in 2010. Word of mouth got the book to number one on Amazon the day it came out, even beating Glenn Beck’s new book. Glenn Beck wasn’t happy. I find this hilarious.

The book itself contains short stories and illustrations from just about every genre, telling what life is like when people know about their deaths. Each title is of a death that is mentioned in the story, and they range from the typical (cancer) to the unexpected (flaming marshmallow). Each story takes place in a different universe with a different year and rules, but a few rules about the machine remain consistent, among them the one that the test must be a blood test. This consistency gives the stories a common string that holds all of them together and lets you imagine that maybe there are a bunch of alternate worlds out there that are using the machine.

The stories themselves are of very high quality. Naturally I liked some stories more than others, as is often the case in any short story collection. Despite all the stories being about the machine, the book didn’t beat any dead horses with its exploration of the machine. Sometimes the machine was a fad; in other tales you faced serious consequences by not being tested. Each story gave a new look at how the machine changed the characters’ worlds, whether they chose to avoid their fate, go ahead and dive into the inevitable, or figure out society’s new rules for acceptable or cool deaths. I laughed, I held back tears, and I stopped after some story to think about the machine’s implications in the world.

Even though the title is Machine of Death, the stories aren’t really about death. Death is a major theme, as are determinism and free will, but what really shines is the hope so many of these characters show as they move on with their lives. Knowing the end isn’t the end of the world unless they chosee to make it so. What matters is how they–and you–get there.

The verdict: Read it. Come on, they’re short stories. You can gobble one or two of them at a time. There’s a free .pdf version if you’re not sure or really can’t afford to spend a few bucks. Be warned. You’ll be thinking about this machine a lot after you’ve finished reading.

In non-review news, the editors are accepting submissions for Volume Two. Yes, this is what I hinted at a few days ago. The submission guidelines are at the site, but here’s the tl;dr version. (Reading the tl;dr version does not excuse you from reading the rest of the submission guidelines. You’ll need to get the submission instructions, for one.)

* Yes, you will get paid if your submission is accepted.
* The suggested story length is 1500-7500 words, but these aren’t hard and fast limits.
* Illustrators, submit your portfolio, not sketches for specific stories.
* Submissions are accepted through 15 July 2011, but it’s obviously in your best interest to submit earlier.

Now read the rest of the instructions and get writing! Or sending portfolios, if that’s your thing.

Schumm explains a lot of material in the book in order to introduce the Standard Model of particle physics. He does a great job at reminding the reader of things that were first brought up many pages back, which is a good thing because the field has a lot of terms that can be confusing at times. The book begins by explaining the forces of nature, then moves on to relativity and quantum physics and the history of these fields before introducing subatomic particles. I really wish I had paid more attention to the chapter on subatomic particles–not that I didn’t pay attention, but the book exists because of those particles, and I was already familiar with some of them. Others flew out of my memory a few minutes after I read them. Maybe I should have gone back to the chart at the end of that chapter.

You probably already know that math is extremely important in physics; physics, after all, is mostly math, and you’d think I would have done better in my physics classes for this reason. I probably did so badly in physics because the emphasis was on knowing a bunch of formulas and not on math, or at least the abstract math that I love, particularly algebra. Abstract algebra, specifically Lie groups (pronounced “Lee” after discoverer Sophus Lie), has applications in particle physics, and the next chapter devotes itself to explaining Lie groups from the very beginning. By “very beginning”, I mean that Schumm assumes the reader has no clue what a group is, which is one of the first things an abstract algebra student learns. Schumm even explains complex numbers when the need arises, thus assuming even less mathematical background. Mathematical terms that the layman probably wouldn’t know are uncommon; I found myself filling in the blanks when he explained things. “Oh, they’re isomorphic,” I’d think to myself when he made the case for two groups being the same. The casual reader doesn’t need to know that term to understand, so leaving it out is perfectly fine. Even though I have no experience with Lie groups, I still found myself spoiling things for myself while Schumm explained them in a nontechnical way. This isn’t a bad thing, just a comment for those going into this book with knowledge of abstract algebra.

Schumm also has a good sense of humor that finds it way into the text. I found myself turning to the notes in the back every other note or so because every now and then they’d have little to do with the text at hand. The notes would recommend a carousel in Santa Cruz (where he teaches) when he explained a physics concept or tell a story about a physicist. He’d crack a joke now and then in the text, too, and we all know that humor is the best teacher.

If you have any interest in particle physics, read this book, but be warned: It won’t be a speedy read unless you’re already familiar with particle physics. I probably should have read it more slowly than I did to absorb everything, but even at the rate that I did read it, it still took an entire evening to read some chapters. That’s not because they were poorly written but because the material wouldn’t stick to my brain. Reviewing the material is definitely in order.

The book is actually a collection of nine short stories detailing the history of robots and their interaction with humans. While each one can be treated as a separate story, several characters appear in multiple stories. Most notable of these characters is Susan Calvin, the robopsychologist whose appearance links the stories together. In the stories the robots grew from comparatively primitive and nonspeaking beings to mind-reading robots to computers that control large parts of the world. If you read the stories in order, you can feel the tension the robots are creating.

My favorite stories in the set were the first and the eighth ones, “Robbie” and “Evidence”, possibly because they showed some character development in a plot-driven story. I wish “Robbie” were linked to the other stories in more ways than Susan Calvin showing up in it. And of course, the big question in “Evidence” remains unanswered. I think he is.

His writing style is concise, clear, and more plot-driven than character-driven. I like plot-driven writing, so that doesn’t bother me. I do, however, have one major gripe about Asimov’s writing. He loves his commas and dashes, and he uses them often and needlessly. I’m an advocate of cutting all needless punctuation, so part of me wants to take a red pen to the book and mark away. Then I remember that Asimov’s dead and therefore won’t care.

I enjoyed this collection (and I don’t reach much scifi), but I’m not sure if I’m going to read the rest of Asimov’s books. I definitely won’t right away; my to-read list on GoodReads could keep me occupied for the next three years if I stuck to reading them alone, and that’s not including other things I pick up along the way. We’ll see. As for you, definitely pick it up and read the whole thing if you’re into scifi or robots. If all you want to know is the origin of the Three Laws of Robotics, read “Runaround”. The previous stories hint at the rules, but this story spells them out. Otherwise, read a story or two and do an interest check, which is easy enough to do with a short story collection.

Next up in the reading queue is Deep Down Things, which is about particle physics. There may or may not be a review of this, mostly depending on how much I’ve absorbed from the book.

My reading goal at the beginning of 2011 was to read 25 new books, which is roughly a book every two weeks. This gave me room for a reread or two but would encourage me to read books I haven’t read before as an attempt to clear my bookshelf and make a future move easier. (This is working, by the way; I’ve cut my bookshelf almost as far as it’ll go. Most of those books can be replaced if I get a hankering.) It also gives me breathing room during October and November when my reading time will be almost zero unless I read during a hypothetical commute. That’s what NaNo season does to me.

Today’s 10 April, and I’ve read sixteen books in 2011. Seventeen, actually, since I read Through the Looking Glass on 30 March and forgot to mark it since the copy I have has that in the same book as Alice in Wonderland, and I already read the latter. Let’s stick to sixteen since that’s the Goodreads count. Many of these books are short, but I took my sweet time reading some of them. See the Narnia series as an example. I spent two months reading the whole series. Then there were a lot of days where I didn’t read anything at all. So when did all these books get read?

Five of them came from the last week and a half. It started when I read Macbeth in one day. Then I finished the last three chapters of the linguistics textbook that I had been reading since the new year. Then I read Hamlet in two days, followed by A Brief History of Time, followed by Othello–basically, a bunch of things I should have read by now but haven’t for some reason. Right now I’m reading I, Robot to keep with that trend.

Instead of writing a full post review of each book I haven’t reviewed yet, I’m going to stick to six words for each novel. Well, except for the linguistics book. Yes, there are spoilers, and one of them is seven words long for reasons you’ll see. Be warned.

Prince Caspian (C.S. Lewis): Lucy’s young, but she knows things.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis): Snooty schoolboy learns the hard way.

The Horse and His Boy (C.S. Lewis): Greener pastures are ahead for Shasta.

The Silver Chair (C.S. Lewis): “Old friend” really does mean old.

The Magician’s Nephew (C.S. Lewis): So that’s where everything came from.

The Last Battle (C.S. Lewis): Still not sure about the ending.

Knight Errant (K.D. Sarge): Strong characters, but the prose dragged.

Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison): This is how plots should unfold.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom): Mediocre prose, but I still cried.

Macbeth (William Shakespeare): Don’t trust Lady Macbeth with anything.

Hamlet (William Shakespeare): (Okay, this is the seven-word one.) You killed my father. Prepare to die.

A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking): The universe is really freaking complicated.

Othello (William Shakespare): What not to do in relationships.

Then there’s the fact that real books can take bullets better than ereaders, or at least the Kindle. A few folks decided to test the Kindle against some of the most popular books of 2010 to see how they fared against the gun. The results only make me cling harder to my physical books. Remember, kids: Megabytes won’t save your life when Death comes. That dead tree just might.

Still, I tried to write in my books as little as possible in order to keep the text readable. (Okay, and to maximize resale value when I got to college. Damn expensive textbooks.) While reading for my French classes, I came across many words that I didn’t know, and to avoid looking them up later, I did what any good scribbler would do: wrote the English translation over the word. I gave up on this after awhile, choosing to learn the words the hard way, because writing that many words in my books would have cluttered up the paragraphs.

There is definitely a theme here. I want the ability to mark up my books, yet I find myself doing less and less of it in recent years, probably because marking up the book takes me back to that particular time I read the story. Every reading should be fresh without being influenced by previous readings. Marking up my books takes that away. This, more than anything else, is why I’ve curtailed my book annotation habit.

I’m glad I did. This book served as a great introduction to Narnia, with the four kids going through the wardrobe to discover the land where it was always winter but never Christmas, first Lucy, then Edmund, then Lucy and Edmund with Peter and Susan. The story reads like someone is telling a fairy tale, and because of this I felt like I was sitting next to the person telling the story. The story was straightforward and self-contained with a single plotline, and it was a great example of simple storytelling. I did find myself wondering what sorts of adventures the kids would have in Narnia for the other six books, most of which are as short as this one was. I may finish the entire series and condense the reviews into one post unless something strikes me in one of the books as worth a review in its own right.

Tomorrow I start finding out about the kids’ other adventures in Narnia.