The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace & Babbage

by Sydney Padua

Why You Will Like This Book:

• What if Lovelace and Babbage, inventors of the first computer, didn't die young and disappointed respectively? What if they actually built their computer, and when on to have thrilling adventures with it after that?
• This is the subtitle (and how could you not like a book with a subtitle like this?): "With Interesting & Curious Anecdotes of Celebrated and Distinguished Characters Fully Illustrating A Variety of Instructive and Amusing Scenes; as Performed Within and Without the Remarkable Difference Engine"
• It's a graphic novel! But with so many footnotes and endnotes that it's basically a normal book! But the footnotes are way better than a normal book cause they're so funny and interesting!* Cause history is weird, man.

And Why You Might Not:

• It purposefully goes off into an alternate universe, with historical inaccuracy. I love this aspect, but it's one of the only possible things I could think of that you might not like.

Thoughts: Man, I loved this book. It's the kind of book that makes me want to walk out of the house and go become a Scholar, right off. Study wacky history for the rest of my life. Either that or become an adventuring, mathematical genius who solves crimes and makes awesome stuff.

That mix of easy-to-read and hilarious pictures, historical explanations taking up half a page of footnotes, and such wonderfully eccentric people to work off of as Lovelace and Babbage... Crazy history, crazy Victorians, crazy mad geniuses--it has it all, and I love it.

Here are just a couple examples of the great artwork:

This is possibly my favourite part of the book, where the two meet for the first time:

(Note: not including this in my total book count because it's a graphic novel. Even though it's super long. Sigh. Having rules can be hard sometimes.)

Grade: 5 stars

If You Like This, You Might Also Like:

• The Case of the Missing Moonstone by Jordan Stratford: Because it also an AU story of Ada Lovelace and a friend having adventures. TCotMM is more for children, but it's lots of fun.
• To Be Or Not to Be: A Choosable-Path Adventure by Ryan North: The tone and the humour remind me of this one. Both authors are obviously internet-savvy and casually funny in a way that greatly appeals to me.

*Soon I'm going to make a list of Top Ten (Or So): Books With Awesome Footnotes. Because there are several of them, and amusingly done footnotes always make something better.