""Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!""

[fiefoe]

How come this book never came my way when I was younger? It belongs to the class of books that have the potential to brighten and broaden an adolescent's outlook. In the same things-might-have-been-different department, my dad never came through with his promise to teach me to put together a radio. (Sniff.)

Richard Feynman has a penchant for ending his paragraphs with exclamation marks. At first I suspected it to be a rhetorical device, but no, he is really that enthusiastic. E.g.: he recounts with great relish how he once started and put out a respectable-sized fire in his bedroom with his mother downstairs none the wiser. ('That was fun!')

He also sneaks in some life lessons nicely. By watching the hulking pantry man assemble desserts, he realized the difference between the real world and what it looked like. His misadventures around a hotel kitchen taught this teenager that innovations in the real world (again) was difficult. At a party hosted by the deaf and dumb, he found himself liking the fact that it was his problem to be comfortable around people.