What have you been reading?

[jpgray]

I've just gone through Erich Fromm's The Sane Society.

[redqueen]

1. A book on parenting - Giving The Love That Heals.

It's new agey but also most excellent. I would recommend it to every parent. It's far from the same old same old.

[bicentennial_baby]

2. Economics Journal Articles...sigh

Stoopid thesis and term papers. x(

And yet, I still read Econ books for pleasure as well. :crazy:

:hi: you!

[mcctatas]

3. The Assassination of Julius Caesar by Michael Parenti...

it's really well written and resonates with the times we live in IMHO

[Kali]

4. an historical journal

this issue was about the US border history, fences/walls and reactions to them

[FloridaJudy]

5. Amy Tan

Saving Fish from Drowning - a weird little book about a group of American tourists who get kidnapped in Burma, told from the perspective of the ghost of the tour leader - who was murdered before the trip even started. I found it in the two for ten dollar bin at Walgreen's, and Amy Tan is worth five bucks.

I plan to recycle it through Book Crossing when done. Check out the bench in front of the Chinese restaurant.

[bikebloke]

6. Somebody by Stefan Kanfer

The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando

[BurtWorm]

7. I'm reading an Iraq war memoir called Joker One which will be out in February or March

If you like war memoirs it's pretty damn good. If you don't like war memoirs, it's actually very well written and you could do worse than pick it as representative of the genre. I'm reading it to review it. I doubt I would have picked it to read for pleasure.

Before that, I read another book coming out in early 2009, Remarkable Creatures, by Sean B. Carroll. I definitely would have picked it to read for pleasure and I wouldn't have been disappointed. It's a collection of stories about scientists and explorers working on the problem of evolution--including Darwin, Wallace, the Leakeys and a whole bunch of others.

And just before that, actually for pleasure, I read Tony Horwitz's a Voyage Long and Strange about the era of American exploration leading up to the Mayflower, and Peter Pringle's The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, about the arrest and death by starvation of one of the Soviet Union's leading botanists and a protector (and ultimately the mortal enemy of) Lysenko, Stalin's pet scientist. Both of these books were indeed very pleasurable to read and learn from each in its own way. Highly recommended to people who like nonfiction and history.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. "Wordy Shipmates" by Sarah Vowell, and "Beef" by someone, I don't remember the name

[Z_I_Peevey]

9. More Information Than You Require

by that dapper John Hodgman fellow. Very amusing, very enjoyable.

Now I want to see more photos of him in the long hippie hair--apparently he rocked quite the ponytail in his younger days.

[mvd]

10. Just finished Armed Madhouse. Now reading:

Islam: The Religion and the People by Bernard Lewis and Buntzie Ellis Churchill.

[enigmatic]

11. I just gave that to a co-worker a few weeks ago

No shit; I've been turning him onto a pile of my sociology/philosophy books I'm in the process of giving away because of space.

This is the next one I'm giving him:

[SOteric]

12. Honore de Balzac

La Comédie Humaine.

[Zomby Woof]

13. American Lion

Jon Meacham's new examination of the Jackson presidency.

I am on a presidential bio kick lately.

[XemaSab]

14. If I told you, you would lose all respect for me

My brain needed some :popcorn:

[Forkboy]

15. Standing In Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice

[mokawanis]

16. The Pillars of Hercules - Paul Theroux

Theroux's account of his travel around the Mediterranean coast.

[achtung_circus]

17. Why Is Sex Fun?

Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond dealing with the evolutionary development of human sexuality. Diamond addresses some peculiar aspects of human sexuality. These include why women's ovulation is not overtly advertised; why humans have sex in private rather than in public, as is the case in all other mammals; and why the ovaries are u-shaped.



Chapters

1. The animal with the weirdest sex life
2. Battle of the sexes
3. Why don't men breast-feed their babies? The non-evolution of male lactation
4. Wrong time for love: the evolution of recreational sex
5. What are men good for? The evolution of men's roles
6. Making more by making less: the evolution of female menopause
7. Truth in advertising: the evolution of body signals.

[femmocrat]

18. I just started "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle."

Not much time to read these days.

[Grey]

19. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

Really good read.

[Adsos Letter]

20. Just finished "American Transcendentalism" by Gura....

and now almost half-way through "A Magnificent Catastrophe" (the election of 1800) by Larson.

[bridgit]

21. Dark Tort

[insanity]

22. Academic Journals

and Kant.

Now it is time to restart this tome on Scottish History

[nomorenomore08]

23. Two most recent reads were 'Iodine' by Haven Kimmel and 'Amsterdam' by Ian McEwan.

Both excellent, the former surprisingly more so than the latter - I already knew from 'Atonement' that McEwan was a great writer, but I was absolutely blown away by the Kimmel book. If you put together Faulkner's rural settings and convoluted storytelling, with David Lynch's demented surrealism, with Dorothy Allison's renderings of abuse and trauma, with a totally unique and nearly flawless prose style, you might have something close to what 'Iodine' is like.

In fact, here's the Amazon link, just because I recommend the book so highly: http://www.amazon.com/Iodine-Novel-Haven-Kimmel/dp/1416572848/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227597580&sr=1-1

Next I'm about to tackle Nietzsche's 'Antichrist'. Yay! Some light reading! :P

[Lucian]

24. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

I want to move to Provence!

[Ohio Joe]

25. I just finished The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

I now feel prepared.

[Sisaruus]

26. My to-be-read pile is about 3000 books deep

This week I'm trying to finish:
Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams
Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

For the last few months I've not been getting very far with
Living My Life: Volume One by Emma Goldman

More of what I've read in 2008 is at my librarything profile page at
http://www.librarything.com/profile/sisaruus

[ulysses]

27. Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver

Making myself read more fiction this year.

[terrya]

28. I just started "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham

[PassingFair]

29. Love everything he wrote.

:thumbsup:

[PassingFair]

30. Plowing through "John Adams"....

rough going.

I am anxious to finish it, because I got
"The Shock Doctrine" for my birthday, and
I can't wait to get to it.

[BarenakedLady]

31. Reading now: Five Smooth Stones

Recently finished Jar City and The Stupidest Angel. Both were very good.

Thanks Lounger recommendations!