21 things from this book went into her brain. Here are the first 6.
Edwin Abbott shows in Flatland that a penny looks round from above but like a straight line from the table's edge, so what we perceive depends on where we stand.
Edwin Abbott satirises a rigid class order that calls its own privilege natural and divine, showing how a hierarchy can dress itself up as the way things must be.
In Flatland, Abbott's narrator works out a shape from how faintly its edges fade, a reminder that patient attention to small differences can reveal what a quick glance misses.
In Flatland, Abbott has his narrator argue that everyday life depends on trust that people are what they appear to be, and that without it even simple arrangements become impossible.
In Flatland, Abbott's narrator finds life dull without colour, a reminder that small pleasures in how things look can make ordinary days feel rich.
In Flatland, Abbott shows a skilled speaker calming a crowd by working through each group's self-interest in turn, a reminder that fair-sounding persuasion can hide its real aim.
Abbott's narrator notices that people who say conduct is fixed by nature still scold their children as if choices really matter, a sharp reminder that we all act on the belief that choices count.
In Flatland, Abbott's Lineland monarch is sure his one straight line is the whole of space, a reminder that what we have never experienced can be quietly mistaken for all there is.
In Flatland, Abbott shows each new dimension forming when a shape sweeps through the one before it: a point makes a line, a line makes a square, and a square makes a cube. Simple steps can build something new.
In Flatland, the Stranger from Spaceland sees the insides of things that Flatlanders can only see as edges, a reminder that a higher vantage point can show what is hidden from below.
In Flatland, Abbott's Sphere argues that what a lower world sees of a higher thing is only a slice, so a Circle in Flatland is really a Sphere passing through, a reminder that a partial view can mislead.
In Flatland, the Sphere teaches by Analogy: a point, line, square and cube have 1, 2, 4 and 8 corners, so a clear pattern can reveal what cannot yet be seen directly.
In Flatland, the narrator finds that the household he had only inferred in his head is far richer when he sees it directly, a reminder that reasoning about people and things is no substitute for looking at them.
In Flatland, the Sphere points out that seeing everything does not make anyone more just, merciful or loving, so being able to see more is not the same as being better.
In Flatland, the Council answers a new idea by ordering its messenger silenced, a warning about how established powers can resist ideas that unsettle them.
In Flatland, a pattern can suggest a new truth, but only evidence can settle it, as the narrator reasons by analogy toward a fourth dimension while the Sphere asks for the facts.
In Flatland, the Sphere finds that lecturing a self-satisfied mind rarely shifts it, a humbling reminder that telling people they are wrong seldom changes what they believe.
In Flatland, the narrator struggles to get an idea across because his readers lack the tools to picture it, a useful reminder to check whether others share the frame you are working in before you explain.
In Flatland, a claim that cannot be pointed to or measured is hard to test, so Abbott's narrator is silenced by the challenge to show what he means. Ask what would show an idea is true.
Abbott's Square warns that every mind, whatever its dimension, is prone to the same error of locking up the idea it cannot yet picture. Blind spots are a common human habit.
Abbott closes by hoping readers will neither say "this can never be" nor claim to know all about what lies beyond experience, a humble stance towards anything not yet tested.
