08 February, 2010

Tiger Woods Helps Out Astrophysicist

Last week I began reading The Birth of Time by English astrophysicist John Gribbin in which he describes how he and his fellow stargazers determined the age of the universe. I've been reading his book for many years now but a lot of people have started reading him thanks to Tiger Woods.



Mr. and Mrs. Tiger Woods' marital strife a couple months ago has inadvertently given a sales boost to one of Gribbin's back titles.

A series of pictures released by Florida police of Woods's wrecked SUV includes a shot of the back seat, complete with waterbottle, towel and furled umbrella. But there among the shards of tinted glass in the footwell sits a well-thumbed copy of a paperback with the golf-appropriate title clearly visible: Get a Grip on Physics.

This incidental role in Woods's domestic drama has been enough to create a rush to get hold of the book, with the title's sales rank on Amazon.com jumping from 396,224 earlier in the week to a high spotted yesterday by the Wall Street Journal of 2,268.

Speaking in a break between lectures this morning, the author, John Gribbin, said he was "delighted that anyboy's reading my books. I just wish it was one that's still in print."
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2 comments:

  1. Kenneth Burns9:44 AM

    I've been meaning to read The Red and the Black ever since Al Gore said it was his favorite book in the 2000 campaign.

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  2. Skip6:05 PM

    The only instance I can think of where I read something because of someone famous was after reading an interview with Christopher Hitchens wherein he listed some of his favorite contemporary fiction authors. Martin Amis, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, VS Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie.

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