Lightman's Dreams

Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams, 2004. Lightman is a physicist who has written these short meditations on conceptually-possible variations on time. Time might be slower at a lower altitude, or it might be different from one place to the next, or faster at some center and slower far away, and so forth. Vignettes are presented, mostly taking place in the German-speaking world of Einstein's early life (and, one can't help sensing, location of many a well-appreciated sojourn for Prof. Lightman himself). There's really good food as we sit at big wooden tables overlooking the river near the somethingstrasse, it's nice just to be there. Not much actually happens, maybe that's part of the joke, although it's frequently poignant as relatives and lovers lose each other in time and so forth, which grabs you a bit. All in all I enjoyed it.