Just finishing up :

"Daughters of joy, sisters of misery : prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90" by Anne Butler

Picking up:

"1491" by Charles Mann

Soooo what's everybody else snuggled up with?

I'm also reading 1491.

The Sociopath Next Door. Pretty good but also kind of scary in that it describes a few people I have known. :-O

Just finished up Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future which covers the state of the changing auto industry and what might happen.

Just started Endless Universe which puts forth the possibility that there has been more than one big bang or the idea of a cyclic universe. Somehow, the authors have decided big bangs might happen on a trillion year cycle. Damn, I was kinda used to the only one Big Bang has ever occurred theory. Now I gotta worry about being Big Banged out of existence. Pretty soon, someone's gonna tell me there is no Santa Claus.

So AnnaClaire, what do you think of 1491?

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2007, 6:47am.

I'm reading Hitler's Children: Sons and Daughters of the Third Reich Talk About Themselves and Their Fathers by Gerald L. Posner. I've often wondered what it would be like to be the child of Nazi party members.

I'm still reading Catherine of Medici by Leonie Frieda for a book club.

So far it's pretty interesting. Keep in mind that I'm not even 150 pages in though.

Edited to correct stupidity typo.

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2007, 4:36pm.

Started a new book to carry on the train Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading. Corrigan's discussing what she calls the female-extreme-adventure story (a genre I didn't know existed) and using as examples Jane Eyre, Black and Blue, and many others. Pretty interesting.

The last two nights I read Dave Barry's Money Secrets and Scott Adams's Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel. Dave Barry stretches the truth for effect, but he is interesting. Scott Adams gets it just about right.

Dave Barry points out that one should not invest based on tips from friends, among others. He received an e-mail from Nigeria. All of his friends told him to ignore it. He sent money, then more money.

Two days later, I received $47 million in cash. It came via UPS in 578 large cardboard boxes. I have cash all over my house. If I want a helicopter, I just grab a box and go buy one. My money worries are over forever! And why? Because I did not trust my friends. They're not even my friends anymore, now that I'm extremely rich. I hang out with new friends that I met at the helicopter store.

Robert

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2007, 5:23pm.

Robert, Money Secrets sounds like an interesting book - I'm going to have to check it out!

I've started Thich Nhat Hanh's Living Buddha, Living Christ and Sven Birkerts's Reading Life: Books for the Ages-

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2007, 11:32pm.

Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson.

I'm reading Murder on Several Occasions by Jonathan Goodman. It's a book of essays about interesting crimes, chiefly murders. The writing is much better than your average true crime publication and I particularly love the illustrations.

Finished with River of Doubt and am continuing with the exploration theme with Undaunted Courage.

Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, by Robert Leleux, received through the Early Reviewers Program (yay!). It's a "gay boy growing up in Texas with a very eccentric family" memoir. I'm enjoying it.

Also Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland, which I'm finding interesting and thought-provoking.

Finally, Molly Ivins' posthumous book, written with Lou Dubose, Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights, which will make you mad.

The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs, Talking Hands by Margalit Fox, A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, Poor People by Vollmann, all recent good reads.

Continuing with The Shape of Ancient Thought and starting on The Pea and the Sun. I know that the former deserves recommendation; I suspect the second does too, although his solecisms can be annoying.

Robert

How is Year of Living Biblically?

I just finished up The Social Atom. Not bad, but less technical than I wanted it to be. Generally worth the time, though.

I finished up Three Cups of Tea, a great read, as well as Bird by Bird and am now starting Power to the People and The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Just finished The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, James Watson's story of his noble prize winning work on DNA. A suspenseful mixture of science, detective work and gossip. I found myself rushing through the last few chapters to see how things turned out, even though I already knew the outcome.

Just starting Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story of Archaeology.

>10 - aznstarlette - I really enjoyed Living Buddha, Living Christ, I think there's a lot to be said for the connections between the Buddhist philosophy of non-harm and the teachings of Jesus. Another good book on these connections is the Dalai Lama's The Good Heart, which is actually a series of lectures about the topic.

I'm still working on Herodotus, which I'm starting to feel like I'll never finish; also still working on a re-read of John Rawls' Theory of Justice. Finally started The Examined Life by Robert Nozick, and I'm claiming to have started Godel, Escher, Bach, but in truth I haven't had any time to devote to it, and so haven't gotten past the very beginning.

I've started The Shangri-La Diet: The No Hunger Eat Anything Weight-Loss Plan by Seth Roberts. Wrong time of year to be reading this. So far it doesn't look promising.

LOL! Diet books are January reads!

And I'm now reading Soiled Doves : prostitution in the early west by Anne Seagraves.

Sort of a literature follow-up to Anne Butler's book. A compare and contrast.

I just finished Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.It was interesting reading about Marconi's work and the Crippen murder. I thought that Larson's last book, The Devil in the White City was a better read.

I'm reading Weighing the Soul by Len Fisher.
I've only just started it though, so can't really comment on whether it's any good or not.

Unimagined by Imran Ahmed - it's a lighthearted memoir of growing up Muslim Pakistani in the UK of the 1970s and 80s. While it is entertaining, and does explain stuff about Islam as he comes to understand his religion as he gets older, the faux-naive tone is proving a little annoying - it's like Adrian Mole except that was fiction and shaped by the author, and this is real life and less shaped. We'll see - I'm about a third of the way through now.

What I've been saving to read over Christmas are the Frances Patridge Diaries - a lovely fat volume all about my favourite 20th century group - the Bloomsburys and their cohorts. Hooray!

I'm listening to The Mountains of the Pharoahs by Zahi Hawass on audiobook. Pretty good, but I think it would be better as a book, just because there is so much in the way of detailed descriptions. I imagine there are pictures and illustrations, which would make it all much more understandable. I think I'll finish but then plan to read the book.

From Amazon.com: ... The great pyramids of Giza have intrigued humanity for thousands of years. ... Recent cutting-edge research has uncovered information about how and why they were built .... In "Mountains of the Pharaohs," Zahi Hawass, a world-renowned archaeologist and the official guardian of Egypt's timeless treasures, weaves the latest archaeological data and an enthralling family history into spellbinding narrative.

Of the 103 books I've read so far this year, about 40% of them were non-fiction, and here are my favorites for 2007, some of them quite spectacular too:

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts - Clive James
Thomas Hardy - Claire Tomalin
House of Happy Endings - Leslie Garis
Goodbye To All That - Robert Graves
Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir - Shalom Auslander
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire - Alex Von Tunzelmann
When A Crocodile Eats the Sun - Peter Godwin
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer - Tim Jeal
Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family - Alexander Waugh
Public Cowboy No.1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry - Holly George-Warren
The Letters of Noel Coward - Barry Day, ed.

Message edited by its author, Dec 15, 2007, 4:28pm.

#17 - Year of Living Biblically was a fun read. Besides having some hilarious moments where Jacobs tries to make sense of how he can execute commandments literally, it's also a sweet book about the experiences of religion and faith and how rituals and traditions can transform some people. Plus the inside photos detailing the progress of his beard growth are really funny.

I'm reading The No Asshole Rule.

# 28 - wasn't Fathers And Sons great - I've just finished it. Very well written and interesting.

# 29 and earlier - is this the chap who tried to learn everything from the Encyclopaedia Britannica a while back? This one looks excellent, too!

LyzzyBee, Alex Waugh's book was a total hoot, and being a long-standing Waugh fan, I really couldn't have enjoyed it more.

And yes, Jacobs' book The Know-It-All is very entertaining, as he details reading the EB, which I know sounds rather dull, but his book is consistently amusing and highly recommended.

Message edited by its author, Dec 16, 2007, 7:11pm.

LyzzyBee, I agree with LouisBranning about Jacob's The Know It All (the touchstone brings up the wrong book, BTW). It's really entertaining as is this newer one.

Finished the Dudley Barker biography G.K. Chesterton and have now added Marconi by W.P. Jolly and The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman to my nonfiction reading for this week.

For those of you keeping track, I have finished The Shape of Ancient Thought. I would like to write a review, but I doubt my competence. The Pea and the Sun are on the back burner.

I have dipped into The Cambridge Companion to Atheism and Skepticism: an anthology and will continue to do so.

But, I have taken a geocentric stance at church and in another group here, so I have acquired New Theories of Everything and Uncentering the Earth to brace my understanding. They will be going to bed with me in a few minutes to be started.

On the fiction side, I have The Last of the Mohicans to read before the first Wednesday in January. I bring it up in this group because I have New Essays on the Last of the Mohicans to read with it.

Robert

Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2007, 2:24am.

Just started Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris. So far it seems like a Guns, Germs, and Steel from the late 70s.

Just started Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India.

In the middle of Children of Jihad, by Cohen. Interesting - he starts out by wanting to talk to government officials in Iran and then realizes he'll get better and more information if he hangs out with university students. They give him honest, forthright interviews on their politics and feelings about America and the Iraq war. A good read so far.

Reading what is turning out to be a marvelous book.

"Stealing Indian Women:Native Slavery in the Illinois Country" by Carl J. Ekberg

It's about the trade in Indian slaves obviously. But at this point, it appears that Ekberg is arguing that it was the Indians that introduced 'slavery' to the French. A novel idea, at least for me.

Just today I started reading An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina. The book (CD actually) has already grabbed my attention. It's the autobiography of the hotel manager who saved over 1,000 people during the Rwanda genocide. The movie "Hotel Rwanda" depicted what happened at his hotel.

I have another book to recommend about the same subject, although it's "fiction". Do read A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche. My guess is that most of this "novel" is based on real events.

Message edited by its author, Dec 18, 2007, 12:32am.

"The First Idea: How Symbols, Langauge, and Intelligence Evolved From Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans" by Greenspan and Shanker

The authors argue that intelligent and logical thought processes, instead of being seperate from emotions, are actually derived from them.
The argument's pretty convincing and certainly has more to recommend it than the current then-a-miracle-happened, big bang, language explosion, genetic mutation theory.

Almost done with Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point by Elizabeth D. Samet. It shows how a book can influence a reader, even in a unexpected place like a military academy or a barracks.

I've nearly finished The Year of Living Biblically after spending over 6 hours stuck in airport line ups yesterday. I was laughing out loud at times -- I'm sure the people near me in line will be buying copies soon.

On Sunday I finished The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down for January's Bookclub meeting.

Have switched to fiction for now.

Still reading Team of Rivals (half through) and Blood Done Sign My Name (100 pages left), both of which I hope to finish before Jan. 1. They're excellent, but the holidays are putting a serious crimp in my reading.

I'm having a lovely time working my way through Frances Partridge's diaries 1969-1972. A large format 700-pager, I'm getting nice big gulps of it between other bits and bobs to do in my week off (waiting in for parcels, sorting out my LThing tag taxonomy...) It's quite traumatic in places, as she loses her husband and son in fairly quick succession, but she writes so well, and the characters included - younger Bloomsbury set, literary figures of the time, are fascinating and beautifully portrayed. I'm on about p. 400 at the moment and I do not want it to end.

Message edited by its author, Dec 20, 2007, 3:48am.

A side question: will you have read more fiction or non-fiction this year? One of my reading goals was to even it up - I've never done that and I won't have this year, but I will have read proportionally more non-fic than last year at least.

Just out of interest, really!

#47 LyzzyBee - My fiction reading will probably always outweigh my nonfiction reading. I do, however, set a goal of at least 100 nonfiction books every year. So far, I have managed to read 121 nonfiction books this year.

That's a great question, LyzzyBee. This year I read way more non-fiction than fiction.

I read some Cormac McCarthy and two scifi/fantasy books and everything else was either auto-biographies or history. (I'm not counting the books I read to the kids ;)

Message edited by its author, Dec 20, 2007, 7:11am.

It's inevitable that I'll read more non-fiction. Measured in bookshelf space non- dominates at about 4.5 to 1 in my library.
This fact does not trouble me in the least.

Salve MagisterLudi!

I look forward to seeing your library and what sorts of non-fiction occupies you :)

Message edited by its author, Dec 20, 2007, 4:45pm.

Typically, I read about twice as much fiction as non-fiction each year, although this year, I am at close to 40% non-fiction.

I'm waist deep in Measure of All Things, about the foundations and history of the metric system. Next up is Body of Secrets, a history/profile of the NSA.

Just finished Elizabeth: the struggle for the throne by David Starkey.I am looking for his other books now. I previously read The Six Wives: the queens of of Henry VIII

Last night I finished New Theories of Everything and started Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method. Anti-anti-geocentrism, here I come.

Robert

Robert,

This book sounds great. I've added it to my wishlist. What did you think of NToE?

Now reading The Big Change by Frederick Lewis Allen. I've got the 1952 edition. The pages are a bit yellowed, but the thinking & feeling of the "mid-century" era comes through nicely. Allen talks about the threat of "Plutocracy" taking over our government at the turn of the century. The threat was very real, but we had forward thinking leaders like Theodore Roosevelt to save our democracy. Also "muckraking" journalists, for the press (except for Hearst) was not controlled by the corporations.
I try to alternate reading one fiction followed by a non-fiction. The fiction I had just finished was Atonement & it "knocked my socks off" & I don't know what other fiction could follow such an act.
Mr. Allen's history of the 1st half of the 20th century does a good job.

torontoc, my husband and I are reading Catherine de Medici by Leonie Frieda. I know it's not the same author you are reading, but we are really enjoying it so I thought I'd let you know.

Thanks, LynnB- I'll add the title to my "interesting books to look for list"!

ThePam,

New Theories of Everything was readable and temperate. It was a revision of an earlier work, and sometimes that showed and was uncomfortable. There is a geocentrism quotation in it that I hope to dig out and post over on Happy Heathens one of these days.

If you have read a lot of popular cosmology, you will find yourself going over quite a bit of old ground when you read this. Nevertheless, there is new information in the book, and it is an interesting take on the kinds of thing we can know.

Robert

Message edited by its author, Dec 23, 2007, 8:15pm.

Just re-read Red Azalea by Anchee Min and was moved by it once more. An incredible personal story of one woman's experience during Mao's Cultural Revolution. I saw her in person recently and she was unforgettable.

Thank you, Robert. I haven't read a 'book' about cosmology in some time (articles seem to fit more easily into my schedule :)

I'm interested now in the idea that time may be slowing. (I can't say why, but the notion amuses me no end.)

I have just joined this group (uninvited), hoping to find some interesting and engagingly-written books which have appealed to other members.

At the moment I am reading This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin which I am finding quite fascinating. I'm also dipping into two Peter Ackroyd books: London - the Biography and Thames - Sacred River.

I'm reading Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago by Lealan Jones.

Message edited by its author, Jan 19, 2008, 10:10pm.

I'm reading Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - been looking forward to it for ages but a) it has these stupid fantasy superhero sequences in and b) it's got some really gross stuff in which means you can't read it at mealtimes.

I'm a bit concerned that a) means I don't know whether to file it under fiction or non-fiction - normal (auto)biographies go under non-fic but I guess I put Bruce Chatwin's stuff in that category and a lot of that was proved to be a bit of a fantasy-fest!

#63 Welcome, Thrin! I've been wanting to read Ackroyd's London: the Biography for a long time! Maybe in 2008...

#64 Hi, homegirl ~ Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago sounds really interesting. How are you liking it? I'm an expat Chicagoan, born and raised on the southwest side (near Midway airport).

Hi! I love it. It's a very candid book. It's very grim but interesting because we not only get to know the thoughts behind the boys, but also the other residents in the ida b wells complex. Great read!

Deep Water, Ancient Ships by Willard Bascom is on my immediate reading list. After that, we will see.

For some reason, the Touchstone for the book will not work and it does not appear in the list of 'others' either.

I got The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Asheburg for Christmas and will be starting it now....

LynnB -- I've heard the author interviewed a few times on NPR. Tell me how you like the book!

Finished the Willard Bascom book, so I am now moving on to How to Read Literature Like a Professor and Loud and Clear, both of which were recommended on Library Thing.

The Dirt on Clean was fun to read. It traces beliefs and practices surrounding personal hygiene. It is interesting to see how standards have changed, and how bathing was once feared by many people. It's lightly written...easy to read and contains lots of fun trivia along with the more serious discussions.

Sounds even more interesting than it did from just the interviews. I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

Hello,

I am reading His Oldest Friend by Sonny Kleinman. It is about the relationship between a young man of 20 and a woman of 93 in a nursing home. The boy was born in the Dominican Republic in deprived circumstnaces, and the lady is American who loves opera and does not understand a thing about computers.

Happy 2008! Dorith

I'm working on Within the Circle (no touchstone) by Andrea B. Rugh. It describes a year she spent living in a Syrian village during the early 80's. She's written other great books about life in the Mideast, especially about Egypt, and I'm enjoying this one too. I'm also reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, her account of a year when her family tried to live only off food bought or grown locally. Very thought-provoking.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster are both current reading, and I am also diving into a some longer books that will take me several weeks to read:Cultural Amnesia by Clive James, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America by George Nash and Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson.

alcottacre, when Clive James' Cultural Amnesia first came out, several reviewers said that it was a book that you should dip in and out of, and that reading it straight through wasn't recommended. Well, of course, I just had to read it straight through and absolutely loved it, but it took me 12 days, though I can honestly say I hated for it to end.

I've started Benazir Bhutto's Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography. I just wish it were under happier circumstances.

I've just finished Kafka's Soup: A Complete History of World Literature in 14 Recipes by Mark Crick. Absolutely amazing. There are 14 recipes written in the style of various authors.

#78 - if this is the one published some time ago, it's very good.

Very sad circumstances indeed.

#77 LouisBranning - Thanks for the advice! I will probably end up rotating between the 3 large books so I will be doing the dipping.

My Top 10 non-fiction reads of 2007:

David Miles - The Tribes of Britain
Simon Elmes - Talking for Britain
Nigel Nicholson - Virginia Woolf
Hazel Bell - Indexes and Indexers in Fact and Fiction
David Crystal - Listen to Your Child
Michael Holroyd - Lytton Strachey
Jim DeFede - The Day The World Came To Town
Nella Last - Nella Last's War
Christina Lamb - The Sewing Circles of Herat
Norah Vincent - Self-Made Man

To answer my own question, above, I read 133 fiction and 95 non-fiction in 2007, almost the same balance as in 2006, even though I thought I tried to read more non-fic!