🗂️Table of Content
- Book details
- Book wrap-up
- Should you read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”?
- Review of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
- Do I recommend “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”?
- My Rating
🔖Book details
Name: “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character
Author: Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman
Language: English
Genre: Biography
Publication date: 1985 (US)
Pages: 350
📑 Book wrap-up
‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!’ is a humorous biography by the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman, which is best described by the tag line itself, Adventures of a Curious Character. These adventures span from his radio-fixing childhood to the sensory deprivation tank in his middle age. This book is an encapsulation of the various insights he has gathered throughout his life.
🤔Should you read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”?
If you have a love for science, then Richard Feynman is a name you might have come across before. In which case, I don’t need to you why you need to read it, just know that there is a book called ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!’ and you should read it.
If you have never heard the name Richard Feynman before, know that he is a Nobel Laureate physicist, which implies that he is smarter than most of us and hence his insights are valuable and worth a read.
This is a book for anyone who has a curious mind, never hesitate to ask ‘Why?’. If you can get past his modesty, you will find a ton of things to marvel at and inspire.
🕵️ Book Review of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
Richard Feynman is among the few people I have immense respect for. He is a physicist (Nobel prize-winning one), a professor, a musician, a painter, and overall a fun guy, so he is the guy who can legitimately brag about himself for hundreds of pages and publish it as a book. Just from the title, we can make out that is not what he did, and that is what I love most about this book. All you will find in this book is an adorably eccentric guy who loves science and is never tired of learning something new.
This book is about his thoughts and opinions he wanted to share with the world along with the life experiences that made him feel that way. That is how he balanced the book. The book feels appealing because he wraps all these insights in his life experience, which are downright dumbfounding and deeply amusing. I appreciate the lucidity with which he wrote this book, as we know how intricate a hardcore physics book can get.
He does not fill the book with insights to make it life-changing or revolutionary, nor tried to make it funny enough so that we can let out a belly laugh, but it is somewhere in the middle where it makes a space for itself. ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!’ is funny, witty, insightful, entertaining, but it never excelled at anything in particular. The truth is, Richard Feynman nor this book ever tried to do that, and that is why we should love this book.
📢 Do I recommend “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”?
I can’t blindly say that I recommend this book because I’m not sure if everyone will love it. This book is for certain people who share the same spirit as Mr. Feynman.
If you dare to question, if you curiously crave answers, if you can laugh at your silliness, if you don’t confine to the norm, if you value reason, if you are good at heart, I think there will be part of you that can resonate with him. His craziness will make some sense. His stray goals will align in some direction. But foremost of all, he isn’t joking!
💯 My Rating
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