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Ever since I discovered Half Price Books I’ve been digging through all the stores in my area hoping to find this:

Gravitation probably one of the most massive physics textbooks out there and I’ve always wanted it although I could never justify it to myself to buy it. But last night I was browsing through the Half Price Books store in the university district and I spotted it on a shelf for about $60. Awesome!

When I got home I could not wait to start reading it. I managed to get through only a few chapters before becoming completely lost (as is the norm when you try to read a textbook like a novel) but I noticed that the book was written in a very unique style, filled with parables and trivia. It reminded me very much of Gödel, Escher, Bach except for, of course, the sheer quantity of math.

I mean, you can’t help but not like a book that has this as a heading:

Part III: The Mathematics of Curved Spacetime
Wherein the reader is exposed to the charms of a new temptress—Modern Differential Geometry—and makes a decision: to embrace her for eight full chapters; or, having drunk his fill, to escape after one.