Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Apr 09, 2011

Stephen rated it:

3.0 stars. Satire + Math + Victorian Social Mores + 19th Century Prose + A Little More Satire + Multi-Dimensional Perception + Even More Satire + A Humble, Open-Minded Square as Protagonist = A Classic, English Literature, Science Fiction, Social Satire..….uh, with A Humble Open-Minded Square as Protagonist.
.
.
This is one of those interesting books that sit at the intersection of a number of different genres and so can appeal (or be hated by) a wide number of people. In the case More...

0 comments like (22 people liked it)

Apr 15, 2008

X rated it:

"Flatland" begins by explaining the physical and social structure of Flatland, a two-dimensional world where social status is dependent on the number of angles a figure possesses. The greater the angle and consequently the greater number of sides, the greater the status. Flatland is a surprisingly brutal world, where figures are either incarcerated or executed - depending on their social status - for being irregular or for having knowledge that the ruling class does not want them to k More...

9 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

rgb rated it:

When you read this book, keep two things in mind. First, it was written back in 1880, when relativity had not yet been invented, when quantum theory was not yet discovered, when only a handful of mathematicians had the courage (yet) to challenge Euclid and imagine curved space geometries and geometries with infinite dimensionality. As such, it is an absolutely brilliant work of speculative mathematics deftly hidden in a peculiar but strangely amusing social satire.

Second, its point More...

5 comments like (28 people liked it)

May 16, 2008

Laura rated it:

I was dubious starting this, as it's written in a high Victorian style that can be a bit of a slog, and the introduction, which is mercifully short, did not exactly make my heart leap up like an eagle at the thought of continuing. But once I got into the book proper, it turned out to be a delight on a lot of levels -- for example, as a satire of stratified Victorian society (and our own, too); as a commentary on the dangers of bucking conventional wisdom; and on the difficulty of pushing our min More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2011

Samantha rated it:

http://www.libriecaffelatte.com/2011/05/...

I DUE ASPETTI-IDEE DEL LIBRO CHE HO APPREZZATO DI PIU': la Gerarchia Geometrica e le Femmine Filiformi.
La Gerarchia in Flatlandia è in base al numero dei lati del poligono, più lati si ha e più in alto si è. Quindi un triangolo sarà nella classe più bassa mentre un poligono con molti lati e con la forma il più vicino possibile al cerchio sarà addirittura un "privilegiato".
Invece, le femmine sono viste come linee rette More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Dan rated it:

This book should not be read in hopes of finding an entertaining story. As a novel, it's terrible. It's plot (if you can call it that) is simple and contrived. But, it wasn't written as a novel.

Flatland is a mathematical essay, meant to explain a point: that higher dimensions (more than length, depth and width) may be present in our universe, but if they are, it will be nearly impossible for us to understand them.

The story itself consists of a two dimensional world (Fl More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 28, 2011

Ttssattsr rated it:

An amusing essay of a life in 2D as written by a square, including gentlemanly summations of society, education and political upheaval-cum-reformation. Forays into the one-dimensional Lineland and the three-dimensional Spaceland further complicate the square's already troublesome perception of the world he typically inhabits, and hint at a greater fourth-dimension above even the 3rd. Exceedingly well written and not wholly out of date considering the year of it's first publication; reading in be More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2011

Russell rated it:

This was the direct result of drug overdose. In Psychology, we studied how our consciousness becomes altered by certain things, like sleep, sleep deprivation, drugs, and near-death experiences. I think that the mathematician, Edwin Abbott Abbott, needed sleep, less drugs, and life experiences OUTSIDE of the house because he imagined less-than-exciting characters with lower-than-poop plans. During sleep, we dream, which is an altered consciousness. Now, all of Edwin's dreams, just because he More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2008

Matthew rated it:

For modern readers, the most compelling aspect of Flatland is inevitably the philosophical and theological undertones of the book. It is the story of A. Square, who is the resident of an entirely two dimensional world in which everything exists on a single plane. Flatland, as the narrator names his world, is inhabited various geometrical figures who go about their lives unable to see more than a single straight line. In the course of the book, the narrator is visited by a sphere, who comes from More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2008

Robert rated it:

Flatland is one of those pseudo-scientific novels that has since become a piece of the scientific canon in the same way that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has; when attempting to explain theoretical physics to a class, and at a dead-end, a professor is most liekly to turn to an analogy from Flatland. Which makes sense. Flatland is the story of A. Square, a resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, and how he comes to understand that there are universes in every dimension. Previous to this, th More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2008

Teresa rated it:

Ha, another one of those bizarre science/math books that I enjoyed reading. In this book the protagonist is a square. Yes, a two dimentional figure with four equal sides and four right angles. This square resides in a place where there are only to dimensions. Class is defined by the number of sides a figure contains. The more sides one has the closer it gets to a circle, which is considered to be the highest member of Flatland Society.
What I find hilarious about this novel is that women a More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2007

Jarrodtrainque added it

Unless you're a mathematician, the chances of you reading any novels about geometry are probably slender. But if you read only two in your life, these are the ones. Taken together, they form a couple of accessible and charming explanations of geometry and physics for the curious non-mathematician. Flatland, which is also available under separate cover, was published in 1880 and imagines a two-dimensional world inhabited by sentient geometric shapes who think their planar world is all there is. B More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2007

Beguine rated it:

A quietly whacky, thoroughly odd book that's two parts geometry, two parts satire/social commentary, and one part story. It's a what-if story, a kind of proto hard science fiction, that details the lives and customs of a group of two dimensional figures wherein middle class pentagons try to make matches that will produce children with more sides and less acute angels, women are lines and almost wholly the chattel of their husbands (though chattel that must be appeased as they can kill with a tou More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2010

Kathleen rated it:

This book is about math in the same way that Anna Karenina is about a train. Yes, it is written from the first person point of view of a square. The fact that the angles of a polygon's vertexes determine his place in the class structure makes the story no less a criticism of the social divisions of Abbot's day.

Abbot uses the mathematical metaphor of dimension to berate his society for a very limited worldview. In doing this he, as so many great minds before him, used math to illus More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2009

julie added it

The Summer Reading book assigned for 9th grade Geometry, to be read the summer prior. Most BORING book I'd ever read since I tried to muttle through Lassie Comes Home for 7th grade Reading Class(another req'd summer reading assignment). I could appreciate Abbott's remarkably creative expression of the material: a whimsical story incorporating geometry through a plotline and through an abstract, mathematically sound setting. I wished desperately that I could visualize the story--I struggled great More...

0 comments like

Nov 02, 2011

Darryl rated it:

Imagine a world of only two dimensions: length and breadth, but no height. Imagine sentient beings living in this world. Everything appears as a horizontal straight line, like looking at coin on table, keeping your eye level with the edge of the table. Now imagine that a sentient sphere, gazing at this Flatland from above, decides to venture down and communicate with a square. From his vantage point, he can see everything. The walls of Flatland are no barrier to his all-seeing gaze. He speaks to More...

0 comments like

Oct 12, 2011

Scott rated it:

What a bizarre book...It's the story of a pious and scholarly square (he literally is a square) living in Flatland, a two-dimensional space. He explains a lot about life in Flatland, about the social structure of all the shapes living together, etc. He thinks all space is two-dimensions, and visits Lineland, where all the people are lines living in one-dimensional space and cannot conceive of a second dimension, and Pointland, where all inhabitants have conception of any dimensions, and thus c More...

0 comments like

Sep 15, 2011

Andy rated it:

I found out about Flatland after Sheldon mentioned it during an episode of The Big Bang Theory. Proof that TV can educate! So I picked up a copy at the wonderful (and recently relocated post earthquake) Scorpio Books while on a short trip to Christchurch for an interview a few weeks ago. They always have a huge and varied selection of Penguin Classics, much to my delight.

Flatland, published in 1884, is part mathematical essay, part instruction in geometry, part introduction to imagi More...

0 comments like

Aug 07, 2011

Joseph rated it:

Like an atheist devouring C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions offers vital sustenance to the normal diet of any English major.

From a geometric rather than moralistic perspective, Edwin Abbott Abbott presents readers with a familiar world from an unfamiliar perspective. And these other perspectives are not merely the stuff of religious mythology or the imaginations of the insane. They are, rather, the heart of what makes Homo sapiens human or, one More...

0 comments like

Jul 27, 2011

Michael rated it:

What an amazing book! Written in 1884 by school master Edwin Abbot it is either a commentary about the social structure of Victorian England or a treatise on geometry (or both).

It is a very short novelette (I finished it in about 4 hours), but it was nearly impossible to put down. For a book whose main character is a square in a two dimensional world, that is an amazing statement.

It is obvious social commentary. The society created in the universe of Flatland is both intricate and highly hi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Juushika rated it:

A square living in a two-dimensional plane explains his ingenious world, and his revelatory introduction to lands of fewer—and more—dimensions. I have fond memories of reading this book as a child, but this was my first time revisiting it since then—and it was quite an experience. What I remembered best is a brillaint, unique concept, and that's still there: there's nothing else out there like Flatland, a world that appears utterly alien but is in fact too well-realized to be unfamiliar. It's in More...

0 comments like

Jul 06, 2011

Miriam rated it:

Fascinating, reminded me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Great insight into True Believers, also, and how people react when their worldview is challenged. Poor little square that lives in a two-dimensional world has an experience in the third dimension, sees the truth of our natures, and is unable to relay his experiences to his fellow two-dimensional inhabitants, because the third dimension is not visible, can only be inferred. Ultimately he is unsuccessful and imprisoned for knowing the truth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 29, 2011

Mary added it

A proselytizing Square in Flatland is called mad when he tries to describe the 3rd dimension.
He dedicates his book:
"To
"The Inhabitants of SPACE IN GENERAL
"And H. C. IN PARTICULAR
"This Work is Dedicated
"By a Humble Native of Flatland
"In the Hope that
"Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
"Of THREE Dimensions
"Having been previously conversant
"With ONLY TWO
"So the Citi More...

0 comments like

May 12, 2011

John rated it:

I wanted to read this book because Carl Sagan mentioned it in his series Cosmos. The book describes how different dimensions are perceived and how difficult it would be to explain the experience of higher dimensions.

The book was misogynistic, a fact poorly addressed in the prefix to the second, revised edition. Flatland is a social commentary. The story covers not only the concepts of different dimensions but ridicules social status based on "good breeding." Elites keep p More...

1 comment like

Apr 19, 2011

Neeraja rated it:

A classic that needs no introduction. I have seen this book on our bookshelf for as long as I can remember and yet I never ventured into even turning a page, for I had seen this book in the hands of intellectuals, of mathematics geniuses and heard them talk about a new abstract dimension in mathematics. Me and mathematics, and that too abstract, never go together in a positive sentence. And naturally I shied away from the book as long as I could. But I'm glad that I finally "faced my fears" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 18, 2011

Diego rated it:

Flatland es un gran libro que tristemente no es muy conocido por su naturaleza "matemática" si bien se mantiene como un gran clásico y aun es leído por matemáticos y físicos debería ser considerado por una audiencia mas general.

La historia es una especie de metáfora sobre la sociedad del siglo XIX particularmente la sociedad de la era victoriana en Inglaterra, aunque un conserva valides en su retrato de algunas casetas de la sociedad contemporánea, si bien es una sátira es More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2011

Renae rated it:

I think a lot of the geometric aspects of this might have been a bit above my head, but I certainly enjoyed the commentary on the treatment of women and the suppressing of the lower classes.

Using a flat geometric plan as a basis for a satire on society is certainly ingenious, especially since the novella also serves as an explanation in dimension. I found the comparing of women as 'lines' that are pointy who have to run around warning people so they don't accidentally kill people to More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 06, 2010

Ruth rated it:

160 pages. Donated 2010-01.

"How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? Edwin A. Abbott's droll 'romance of many dimensions' explores this conundrum in the experiences of his protagonist, A Square, whose linear world is invaded by an emissary Sphere bringing the gospel of the third dimension on the eve of the new millennium. Part geometry lesson, part social satire, this classic work of science fiction brilliantly succeeds in enlar More...

0 comments like

Nov 15, 2009

Amanda B. added it

This book was given to me, I believe it was, my sophomore year. We watched a video in math, this year, and it was supposedly based on this book. I am not too much of a math lover, but I thought maybe I could give this book a shot.

Flatland is about a square questioning society about a society with no dimensions, one dimension and three dimensions. That aspect of the main character is similar to myself in the sense that I also question many things in society, like non-violence. I try t More...

0 comments like

Oct 20, 2009

Eric rated it:

Some Favorite lines:
p.109. Regarding the King of Pointland, the Sphere states ...to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.
p.20. It is only now and then in some very remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian may still discover a square house.
p.43. ...but imagine that your Tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of twelve or thirteen inches in diagon More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

reviews