Reddit Reddit reviews Einstein's Dreams

We found 26 Reddit comments about Einstein's Dreams. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Literature & Fiction
Books
Genre Literature & Fiction
Historical Fiction
Biographical Historical Fiction
Einstein's Dreams
Vintage
Check price on Amazon

26 Reddit comments about Einstein's Dreams:

u/woodD · 8 pointsr/CGPGrey

/u/MindOfMetalAndWheels and /u/JeffDujon, if you two enjoyed Sum the next bookclub should really be Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman.

u/maismione · 4 pointsr/books

My favourite short stories (that aren't by Bradbury, that is) are Light is Like Water by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Gospel According to Mark by Jorge Luis Borges.

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman isn't exactly an anthology, but it's nice to pick up every once in a while if I want dreamy food for thought (if the premise sounds interesting to you, you should also read Bradbury's Frost and Fire).

u/Thesket · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Einstein's Dreams? Remarkable book.

u/Spu · 2 pointsr/books

The Republic and Other Works by Plato
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
God's Equation by Amir D. Aczel
The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett
*Shakespeare's Sonnets by Stephen Booth

u/madecker · 2 pointsr/books

Off the top of my head, I'd recommend "Einstein's Dreams," by Alan Lightman. You may also like Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and "If on a winter's night a traveler."

u/DarthContinent · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

If you post the URL like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Dreams-Alan-Lightman/dp/140007780X/

You can still get to the item minus any referral codes, but I guess you'd need to clear cookies and revisit the page if you're intent on not wanting someone to get an affiliate credit. Or, you could optionally add ?tag=Reddit-20 to have that credit apply to Reddit when you buy that or whatever else.

u/tamssot · 2 pointsr/askscience

Check out this delightful little piece of fiction, called "Einstein's Dreams". It imagines how Einstein may have played out different scenarios in his mind, before coming to his Theory of Relativity.

Einstein's Dreams:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/140007780X/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_RnZCub0DVKTXR

u/mushpuppy · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman.

u/m4gpi · 2 pointsr/biology

Not necessarily hard/biology, but there's a wonderful little book (literally, it is little) called "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman. It's a series of vignettes of what life would be like if time/gravity, etc. had different properties. One scenario that i recall is that time moves faster the closer one is to a center of gravity, so people build their homes on tall structures, on top of tall mountains, etc. in order to live a fuller life; eventually this becomes a status symbol, so the wealthiest live at higher altitudes and the poor at sea level. It's very thought provoking and whimsical.

u/ResonantMango · 2 pointsr/ifyoulikeblank

A book that I can recommend and actually considered placing in the title is Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams.

It has a similar format as Sum, however each short story considers what life would be like if time behaved differently as opposed to what the afterlife could look like: if time went faster the closer we were to the Earth, or if there were three directions time can take, etc etc.

One of my favorites is one which imagines that time are birds. If a bird is caught one can hold onto a moment forever, because time is "caught." Those young enough to catch a bird and stop time don't care to, because they are young. The ones that want to hold onto time are too old and so too slow to catch a bird. Gives me the same feeling that most of the stories in Sum do.

u/pseudodoxia · 2 pointsr/gaybros
u/JustHereForTheTips · 1 pointr/cigars

'Einstein's Dreams' by Alan Lightman.

It's a fictional book that itemizes Einstein's dreams leading up to his creation of the theory of relativity. It's a really fun read and gets your head thinking about time and what time is. It's short, with each "dream" lasting only a handful of pages. It's been one of my favorite books to come back to anytime I can.

You can read reviews on Amazon as well as read the first few pages. Clicky for Amazon.

Once you read this you'll probably find that you want to read more of Lightman's books in the hopes of finding other really enjoyable reads. While his other books are good, they're not the same. I haven't found anything that's quite like this book so far, which is a shame. Would love to hear suggestions from folks who have read this and found other books similarly enjoyable.

u/vondahl · 1 pointr/AskWomen

Oh gosh, I'm actually kind of horrible about reading! Some of my favorite little books are:

  • Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. It's a bunch of short stories about different universes based on some of Einstein's theories. For example, one of them is kind of like, "In this universe, time flows backwards. A woman picks a moldy peach out of her trashcan, puts it on her counter to ripen..." They're really interesting! It's a quick and wonderful read.

  • Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman is similar to the aforementioned book. Short stories about different afterlives. It's not a religious thing though. I was actually rereading it this afternoon! Really interesting ideas, some romantic, some ironic, cute, sad, etc. I think it could spark some great conversation.
u/rnelsonee · 1 pointr/askscience

If anyone is interested in this topic, I highly recommend Einstein's Dreams. A very small book filled with different extreme worlds in which time is different than our own, including one like the OP is talking about where people try to live in tall buildings and only the poor scurry about at low altitudes. It's probably my favorite book, and I've read such masterpieces a the novelization of Adventures in Babysitting.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/books

Christopher Moore writes some really lighthearted books.

A Dirty Job is a good one.

Not super lighthearted, but one of my favorites:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker is a nice light read. It would probably be considered young adult, but it's enjoyable.

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman is very light reading about the nature of time. It's not really a novel, just sort of "imagine a world where time works this way" short stories. I read it over and over again because it just leaves a pleasant taste in your mouth.



u/Wylkus · 1 pointr/InsightfulQuestions

To this day there is still no greater book for opening up the world of thought than Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. This book is indispensable.

Aside from that the best advice, as many here have noted, is to simply read widely and often. Here are some other books I can personally recommend as being particularly insightful:


u/Parrk · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Michio Kaku does a great job of explaining advanced concepts of physics in layman's terms. He describes 14 dimensions in the book.

read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Hyperspace-Scientific-Odyssey-Parallel-Universes/dp/0385477058/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1291998866&sr=8-3


DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK FROM AMAZON!
get it elsewhere please.


edit: OOH! since you mentioned time. This will help you learn to conceive alternate states of such....and is a really kick-ass book.


http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Dreams-Alan-Lightman/dp/140007780X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291999070&sr=1-1

DON'T BUY THIS ONE FROM AMAZON EITHER! plz.

u/cellarduur · 1 pointr/CGPGrey

If anyone else happens to like those short-format thought collection-style books, two other interesting ones that I really like are:

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

I come back to both of these books repeatedly for creative inspiration, I like them so much. I have yet to read Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, but from what Grey said, I feel like the two that I mentioned might be a little bit more in-depth and may require a bit more work to understand in some cases.

u/copopeJ · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. It's a collection of short stories, each demonstrating one possible view of time. It's an incredibly interesting read.

u/dsaavedra · 1 pointr/AskReddit

not gonna help you out but you should read Einstein's Dreams, i bet you would really like it. its a very quick read too, should take you no longer than 1 or 2 afternoons

u/plasmaflux · 1 pointr/geek

If you like Flatland, you'll love Einstein's Dreams.

u/yetisquatch · 1 pointr/woahdude

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Dreams-Alan-Lightman/dp/140007780X

If you want to think about time in ways you may not have thought of it, check out this book. Its many little (very interesting) short stories each describing a different scenario with the focus on different facets of time. A must read for those that enjoy seeing things in a different way...

u/Spinosu · 1 pointr/books

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

Each chapter is about 3 pages long (its a novel), it revolves around the nightly dreams that Einstein is having during the time period that he is coming up with his theory of relativity. Each chapter/dream describes worlds where time moves/is defined differently.

Highly suggest it, easy read, beautifully written. Really leaves you sitting there thinking.

u/The_Dead_See · -1 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

I've no answer to your question (if I did I'd be God), but I just want to share a book that you might be interested in - Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. It considers time from a lot of different, fascinating angles.