The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Jan 07, 2017 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: womens-history, graphic-novels-and-comics, history, science, alternate-planes-and-histories, biography, history-of-science

I expected to love this and I wanted to love this, but ... I didn't really love this.

This book is a charming mish-mash of genres: mostly biography, with a little history, a little science, a little historical fiction, a touch of multiverse, and a smidge of steampunk. And it's got that perfect touch of slightly self-deprecating humor that I really like, plus some really fun trivia.

But overall, it's just a mish-mash. In many chapters, I was left wondering: "why?" Why go off on a tangent about eco I expected to love this and I wanted to love this, but ... I didn't really love this.

This book is a charming mish-mash of genres: mostly biography, with a little history, a little science, a little historical fiction, a touch of multiverse, and a smidge of steampunk. And it's got that perfect touch of slightly self-deprecating humor that I really like, plus some really fun trivia.

But overall, it's just a mish-mash. In many chapters, I was left wondering: "why?" Why go off on a tangent about economics? Why throw a bunch of authors into a room together? It felt like Ms Padua was just tossing random interesting facts at a wall to see what would stick. I guess that is the nature of a web comic: they are a collection, and not a cohesive whole. So to try to read it as a cohesive whole is to face disappointment.

I wished there was a lot more about Ada Lovelace, too. I guess Ms Padua was basing her stories on historical documents, and since women didn't appear in the papers back then (except at birth, marriage, and death), she didn't find much on Ada, and thus focused more on Babbage, and others.

Ms Padua is a gifted artist. Her caricatures are spot-on, and the expressions on the faces are delightful. She is also clearly enthusiastic about the historical trivia she has dug up, and her enthusiasm can be infectious.

And the epilogue was wonderful.

I'm really torn on what to rate this. For the art, the beginning, the section about imaginary numbers, and the ending, I'd rate it 5 stars. But the economics section and the authors section both felt so random, they gets 2 stars. So ... I settled on 3 stars. 3 stars with an honorable mention, or something.

I'll definitely read more by Padua!

Things I learned:
* There was famous engineer in the Victorian era named Isambard Kingdom Brunel (I'm an engineer - never heard of him! Why don't engineers have to take a History of Engineering course in college??)
* Wilkie Collins probably based the brilliant but homely Marian on Marian Evans aka George Eliot
* Planet Uranus was originally named George from 1781 to 1850. I never knew this! This was so bizarre that I googled to check, and just like every other thing that I checked in this book, she was dead on balls accurate. (It's an industry term.) Okay, so the planet was actually named Georgium Sidus because back then scientists had a thing about Latin, but it was effectively George.
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May 16, 2015 taeli rated it really liked it

Shelves: graphic-novel, library-book

finished 5/24/15

A very excellent mix of non-fiction about Babbage and Lovelace mixed with a comic AU where Babbage completes his machine and he and Ada use it for various crime fighting and hijinks. Full of footnotes and endnotes and packed with explanations, this was an excellent primer on the lives and interests of Babbage and Lovelace.

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Mar 15, 2016 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, history, from-library, sf, graphic-novel, women-in-science

Had this book merely been composed of the comics we were promised on the front cover, it would have been charming enough. But where I really fell in love with this book was the NOTES. Footnote after footnote, then piles of endnotes after that, then footnotes in the appendices! Padua is clearly my kind of geek. She's not content just to present you with a clever comic, she's going to make sure that you are in on all of the jokes, prove just exactly how clever she is, and then back up nearly every ...more

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