Julius og Gregor - Claus Tøndering

Title: Julius og Gregor Author: Claus Tøndering Genre: Non-fiction Rating: 8/10 # pages: 132 not including appendixes Date read: December, 2007

Summary: Julius and Gregor gives a thorough walk-through of the structure and history of our calendar with all the mysteries and curious stories it contains. Because of this, the book is aimed at anybody who finds calendars interesting.

In addition to this, the book gives the reader a large set of tools to understand and calculate past and future calendar situations. Because of this, the book is aimed at anybody who needs - or is fascinated by - tables and calculations.

And if one needs a calendar for every year from 600-2299, the book has that too. Julius and Gregor is interesting reading for anybody who's gifted with a healthy curiosity towards all the peculiarities hidden in our calendar.

Review: I have to admit to having an ulterior motive in reading and reviewing this book. Claus Tøndering is my dad :) (And he'll probably find this entry through Google alerts. Hi Dad! *waves*) Still, I hope you can trust that I read enough to know my mind and give an unbiased review regardless.

I'm a geek. This is no secret and something I'm proud of. I love maths, I love logic and I love formulas. For that reason along this book was right up my aisle. I now know how to calculate the day of the week for any given date between 1900-2099. I don't know that I'll ever need it, but just being able to is cool :)

But even non-geeks will find J&G interesting, because of the number of anecdotes spread out throughout it about curiosities connected to the history of our calendar. E.g. the myth that Augustus added a day to August because he didn't find it fair that Julius got 31 days whereas he only got 30 (untrue, but funny), or the practise of renaming dates to fit a deck of cards... seeing as there are 52/53 weeks in a year and 52/53 (if you count the joker) cards in a deck: "Let's meet up on Thursday in King of Spades".

I found the book both informative and interesting. And even if I'll probably never end up needing any of the information gained, it'll come in handy when playing Trivial Pursuit! :-)

Granted, the book is in Danish, but if any of the above caught your fancy, check out Claus's calendar faq at http://www.tondering.dk.
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