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Love Triangle: The Life-changing Magic of Trigonometry by Matt Parker

Andre M.'s Recommendation for the 510 Club | March 2025

 

John Green has a soon-to-be-released novel entitled Everything is Tuberculosis, on how everything in our society is touched in a way by a deadly infectious disease. My thought while reading this book is “everything is triangles.” Sure enough, that is the last line in the book.

 

This is one for the triangle lovers. While I admit to getting a bit lost when the triangles are a few degrees removed from the topic, such as asymmetric repeating tiles or 3-dimensional shapes with specific but complicated properties, and perhaps the author could have maybe stuck to actual triangles a bit more, the book is still littered with really interesting anecdotes on the vitality triangles play in various aspects of society, and was an enjoyable read.

 

The main downside is being worried your colleagues will judge you for reading romance novels at work, and you have to explain, “no, no, Love Triangle is about Triangles, not Love”. It does help though, however, that the front cover is littered with triangles, so, if you are concerned with your image of potential erotic novels being beneath you when it comes to reading taste – which naturally, does not need to be the case – make sure to leave it front cover up while at your desk.

 

 

WHAT IS THE 510 CLUB?

The 510 Club is named after the Dewey Decimal classification for Mathematics. It is a book recommendation project facilitated by Mathateca in collaboration with Christchurch MathsJam. Each month we feature a mathematical book recommendation, whether that’s a novel, articles / essays, a puzzle book, textbook, biography... just as long as it features maths in some way. Read the above book at your leisure then feel free to comment your thoughts below, or come along to the following Christchurch MathsJam sessions to join in an informal maths/book chat with the reviewer.

We're always looking for suggestions! If you're interested in contributing a book rec one month, please email christchurch@mathsjam.com to sign up.