6/19/2023 0 Comments Longitude by dava sobel![]() ![]() The 'rough-hewn lunar surface, sprinkled with ragged particles of Moon dust, multiplies the myriad planes where light may strike,' we are told the planets speak 'an ancient dialect of myth' while 'the bright ornament of the planet Venus plays prelude to the rising Sun'. Unfortunately, it is all too rare and, for most of the book, Sobel adopts a far more portentous voice, drowning the reader in treacly prose. Virtually 80 per cent of the sunlight lavished on Venus just skitters off her cloud tops,' she tells us. (The Planets is never that, I concede.) 'Venus's shroud of yellow-white cloud reflects light much more effectively than the dun-coloured, dust-covered surface of the Moon. The author is also capable of the odd well-turned phrase, enlivening what could, otherwise, have been a pedestrian read. ![]() And Sobel certainly relishes her subject, producing a series of tight little essays on the Sun, its planets, and the Moon. Thus, her latest work is filled with more engravings, expensive endpapers and a gold-embossed cover, though this time Sobel takes us not to sea but to the heavens 'on a mind-boggling journey past our siblings in space'. Publishing has thankfully moved on, though Sobel, not surprisingly, has remained loyal to the format that made her famous. ![]()
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