Einstein's Dreams

One of my favorite books ever.

pra cada capítulo perfeito tem um mais ou menos. mas vale muito a pena pelos capítulos perfeitos

An excellent prose. The dreams/worlds are fascinating to read and all seem to go on the path of “What if?” kind of visions. It is an enjoyable, quick, and enlightening read. You can pick up this book and read one story at different times/periods or all in one gulp.

It was alright.

Mostly pretentious mystification. A series of vignettes exploring different visions of time. Almost none of them seem related to any scientific conception of time of any sort. Only a few seem related to any psychological perception of time. If not for those few glimmers I rate it as 1 star.
The crude framing story of a fictionalized Einstein seems there simply to exploit his name and fame and provide a turn of the century Swiss backdrop for the vignettes.
I think the author wanted to dazzle me with taurine ordure. I was not dazzled.

The novel imagines what sorts of dreams Einstein might have had while working on the theory of general relativity. In these dreams, time takes on varied and fantastic forms. In some, time runs backwards: in others, it depends on a person's perception, location or mood. Highly inventive and reminiscent of Borges' and Cortazar's surreal short stories, these stories trace the way that our lives and interactions are shaped by our perception of time.

“There is a place where times stands still. Raindrops hang motionless in air. Pendulums of clocks float mid-swing.”

“Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?”

This one is a very thought-provoking take on the concept of “Time”. Each chapter then is a thought experiment. The book is full of original ideas mentioned in every chapter and some of these ideas make you think really hard about how we perceive time and life in general. There are moments of sublime beauty and unexpected humor in the book as well.

Overall, a lot of “What-if” questions came to my mind post this book.

Beautiful mediations on the nature of time packaged as Einstein's dreams about the city of Bern in 1905. As Eagleman does afterlife in “Sum”, Lightman does time with “Einstein's Dreams”.

If ever there was a book of prose deserving of being called poetry, this is it! The stories are simple yet delicate and leave a lot to ruminate about.

I read this because Scott loved it when he read it many years ago and because Hitchens mentioned it in Mortality and because it was short and light enough to start and finish on a Sunday afternoon after finishing Tristram Shandy. Lovely and thought-provoking, but somehow a little slight, I thought. Which isn‰ЫЄt necessarily bad. I kept waiting for something that went over my head, that would push it into deeper territory, but it stayed accessible, which isn‰ЫЄt usually disappointing but kind of was here. It kept reminding me of D. M. Thomas‰ЫЄs The White Hotel, although I can‰ЫЄt put my finger on why. More obviously, it reminded me of Italo Calvino, which in turn reminded me that I should read more of his books. And that it would be lovely to understand more about science, but novels are so much more interesting.