Periodic Tales – Hugh Aldersey-Williams

In this book the author shares his fascination with the elements that go to make up the periodic table. He follows no scientific order in introducing them, preferring to group them in sections labelled Power, Fire, Craft, Beauty and Earth.

In Power we have the traditional riches of gold, silver and platinum along with the energy providing likes of carbon and plutonium. Fire includes the most reactive of elements such as sulphur, potassium, phosphorus and radium; while Craft covers the malleable metals – long discovered tin, iron and copper along with more recent additions of zinc, tungsten and aluminium. Beauty looks at the colour giving elements, both the physical tints of cadmium, chromium and cobalt and the bright light producing argon and neon. The Earth, or ‘rare earths’ elements are more recently won from the ground, the likes of scandium, strontium and yttrium, unsung but increasingly useful in modern industrial processes. These are just examples - there are of course over a hundred to go at, and he covers them all.

Although the chemical properties are covered, of more interest to the lay reader are the cultural references that have attached themselves – how they arose and are perpetuated independent of updated scientific reality.

Another interesting strand of the book is the human stories behind the discoveries made; the search to fill the gaps predicted by the periodic tabulation and the research into the chemistry and physics behind its organisation.

The trends and fashions in naming new elements is also of interest – Greek & Roman mythology (cerium, promethium), places (germanium, francium, scandium, californium), recently discovered planets (uranium, plutonium), and scientists (einsteinium, rutherfordium, mendelevium).  Geology also gets a look in (mining engineers often at the forefront of discovery) with Samarium.

Aldersey-Williams gets the balance right between science, history, biography, economics and trivia, making for a book packed with interesting information, obscure detail and memorable anecdotes.

The Favourite Game – Leonard Cohen

Read as leg 2 (Montreal Canada) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Is this highly stylised novel just a curiosity or one only for the musician’s fans? In it we follow the early life of Laurence (Larry) Breavman, through whom Leonard Cohen paints pictures of his own time as a child and young adult in Montreal.

Despite, or because of, his middle class Jewish origins Breavman indulges himself in what the city has to offer. In short chapters, some snappy some lyrical, his boyhood, adolescence and student experiences involve girls, poetry, music and the search for novelty and meaning, often expressed through dialogue with friend and soul mate Krantz.

Relations with women feature throughout. Boyhood fascination with the tragic Bertha and first love Lisa (whose favourite game it was to be flung on to snow, to land crazily and leave bizarre impressions in the drifts) gives way to more long lasting involvement with muses Tamara “whose thighs made him a fetishist of thighs” and then Shell.

He meets and falls at first sight for Shell during an interlude in New York, her back story revealed in some detail as they spend lazy days and nights holed up in an apartment.

In love but never content, Breavman returns to Montreal to take up the offer of a summer camp job with Krantz and we get a more mature view of the City. Here the temptations of the women, still Tamara but also the red headed Patricia, persist and conflict with his enduring need for Shell.

As to be expected from Cohen, the prose is captivating as he finds characteristically unconventional but apt ways to bring to vivid life landscapes, situations and people.

More than a curiosity and more accessible than his poetry, the book is a rewarding read whether or not you are a Leonard Cohen fan.