A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna LevinAlfred A. Knopf, 2006

Loosely interwoven stories: Alan Turing, Kurt Gödel, a nameless narrator. Areas of overlap: the Liar’s Paradox, a fortune-telling gypsy woman, a vivid blue, Snow White. I wanted to like this book so much more than I did, though I enjoyed the parts about Turing, maybe because his strangenesses aren’t as off-putting as Gödel’s paranoia, maybe because I knew more, to start with, about his life and his work. There are moments of lyricism in this book, but also prose that’s overwritten, like: “A froth gathers around his lips and bubbles delicately in the breeze of his last exhalation” (218).