I finally gave in to the years of implicit taunting from the unread paperback that's been haunting my successive bookshelves and finished How Not to Be Wrong. What an astounding book. The most revelatory nonfiction I've read this year by far. Mathematics as a subject doesn't have the most um, lets say "exciting" reputation, so I wasn't expecting this to be such an engaging read. I guess I just hadn't learned how not to be wrong yet. It's accessible, fascinating, and absurdly funny; some sections actually made me laugh out loud, once in public. Ellenberg's lifelong love of math shines through so clearly in every page, in every affectionate description of some logical elegance or interesting paradoxes. I loved the snippets of math history in the book as well; some concepts like probability and negative numbers seem so ubiquitous and basic, it's easy to forget that at one point, they were new, that math is a subject with a history, and not just a series of equations to be applied on exams when appropriate.

Anyone who shudders back to terrible and terribly dull nightmares of high school calculus class at the mention of math probably won't be picking up this book, but I think they should. Reading this book feels like having a conversation with your smartest friend, and I came away feeling smarter for it.

Verdict: 4.5/5 = 9/10 = 0.9 = 90%. Incredible insightful and unexpectedly fun read.