How to Read on a Bicycle This is an "occasionally superbly irresponsible, joyous, playful book that has the ability (rather infrequent in the literature of our age) to stimulate our intelligence and produce laughter at the same time. Zaid has managed to avoid the commonplaces of our present cultural currency, and his essays are systematically anti-conventional. [...] Another virtue of the irresponsible (that is, ludic) use of scientific knowledge in the field of literature is that-aside from producing brilliant and entertaining texts-it provides some sort of relief. For those who believe that, in this age of computers and highly intelligent robots, the human task of literature could disappear under the shadow of science, Zaid shows there is nothing to fear. If the collision ever takes place (at least in this instance), it is the presumed Frankenstein that disintegrates upon touching the butterfly; it is science which becomes poetry." Mario Vargas Llosa