September: What Are You Reading Now?

I've just started Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Virtual History by Niall Ferguson took me through the end of my holiday and is still on-going. Very interesting.

I am finishing up Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham for LTERand then I found out my nephew has to read Founding Brothers by Jospeh Ellis for high school history so thought I would read along with him since I have the book.

I just started Give Me Liberty, which has been interesting as the political season here gets more intense.

I just came back from the bookstore in Huntington, L.I., NY with:
Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography by Ken Jennings.
Tibet through the Red Box by Peter Sis and
Railway Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden

I listened to Maphead, which worked out better than I'd expected, although I found the geography bee coverage slightly bogged down.

I'm most of the way through Elizabeth I , which isn't as repetitive as I'd feared (how many ways can one tell a 400 year old story?); author emphasizes foreign policy and diplomacy aspects of her reign, over her personal life.

>3 corgiiman: I'm starting Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham tomorrow and am looking forward to it. BTW, your touchstone brought up a different The Art of Power,

I'm reading Information Literacy Instruction Handbook right now, and then plan to move along to The Great Task Remaining: The Third Year of Lincoln's War. Yes, my nonfiction reading is pretty diverse, but then so is my fiction reading!

I'm reading The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt which I am really enjoying.

9 - that's one of the older books in my local library and I've read it several times. It's really very touching and has the feel of another era.

I'm reading The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood by Jack Zipes. It's an examination of versions of the story in a sociocultural context.

>1 LynnB: I got that out from the library (after reading EMpire of the Summer Moon which was brilliant), but had to return it as the spine had been mended and left the pages too close together to read properly, but I really want to get another copy out and continue my reading on that topic.

At present I am whetting my appetite with The Island at the Centre of the World which is fact heavy, but nicely told. Also, seeing as I seem to be well into non fiction again, I am into The Ongoing Moment which is hard to describe. Using photography and photographs as a starting point, its back blurb says "part string of stoner anecdotes, part memoir, part travelogue, part philosophical treatise, part comic tour-de-force, it is utterly unclassifiable."
I think that works!

Just finished The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Now I've just started The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf.

I've just started Bedlam: London and its Mad by Catharine Arnold.

I'm about to start Mighty Judgment: How the Supreme Court of Canada Runs Your Life by Philip Slayton.

Enjoying Chris Stringer's The Origin of Our Species.

Squeezed in Eden's Outcasts, about Bronson and Louisa May Alcott. I was never a big fan of Little Women but I am going to read some of her thriller/potboiler stuff now.

I'm reading, very slowly when the fancy hits me, Nick Mason's Inside Out.

I have also started reading Albert Camus's Myth of Sisyphus. I am enjoying it, although sometimes I feel a bit lost. It's been a long time since I last read a philosophical essay, I'm getting used to the language again. :)

I've just started Danube by Claudio Magris

I'm half-way through an Early Reviewers book I received, Sheltered From the Swastika. It's interesting, but a bit like the author wrote the same book in two styles, neither was long enough, and so he combined them.

My current reading includes The Healing of America by T. R. Reid, another good book on the health care issue, The Bystander by Nick Bryant, on JFK and civil rights, Roosevelt's Secret War by Joseph Persico, and The Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt.

Just started Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion by Susan Ronald

I am perusing The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers. Not a real read, and you do have to like things like the Fibonacci series and Prime Numbers.

Finished Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age. The author provides an interesting approach to tackling societal problems based on broad, diverse, and egalitarian input and distribution of information, using the internet as system model. The examples are interesting and encouraging.

Now reading Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball. Very interesting research on slavery in South Carolina by a descendant of slave-owning families in the area.

Still reading several books from my last post, and I've started The Lost Bank by Kirsten Grind, about the collapse of Washington Mutual during 2005-08.

Just starting The Black Count by Tom Reiss. It seems like it will be excellent.

Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell. One of the most fascinating men I've ever read about and one of the best books I've read.

Mediterranean Winter, narrative of author's travels in his younger days, re-created from journals. He admits that at times the entries don't really bring a lot specifically to mind, so he adds (ancient) local history as background; that material isn't really my thing, but I'm noting the book here in case Greeks, Phonecians, Romans, etc. are a strong interest to a forum regular, who might've missed this book.

>27 mabith:
I loved that book, reviewed it on my blog yesterday.

I just finished Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite, out next month by Matt Kaplan and was quite impressed

I started Food of a Younger Land subtitle: A Portrait of American Food - Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food was Seasonal by Mark Kurlansky

That title is a mouthful! But the book is great so far and consists of what people wrote in to this survey of what America eats that took place in the 30s (something about putting writers to work). It is divided up by region of the country, and goes into all these different regional dishes (some w/ recipes!). Yum.

On Saudi Arabia by Karen Elliott House - great background on the state of the Kingdom today.

Started Catherine the Great.

My book club will be reading Catherine the Great in December.

I'm reading a very light book my son brought home, Guilty by Reason of Stupidity by Joel J. Seidemann

In West from Appomattox the author describes the political developments of Victorian America developing the thesis that the political concepts and conflicts of today were formed then. On the one hand were the individualists personified by the cowboy, on the other "special interests" who insist that the playing field is not even. Gathering government support by associating individualist middle America with a need, has allowed that segment of the population to gather more government support than the special interests who are viewed as getting too much.

Just finishing "Pleasure and Pastimes in Tudor England" by Alison Weir and with Castiglione's "Book of the Courtier" waiting for me!!

I've just started Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

I've got a few things I just started: Romantic Rocks: Aesthetic Geology by Noah Heringman, and Carolyn Burke's biography of American photographer Lee Miller.

Just starting And We Are Not Saved on race relations/racial justice in the US.

Just started listening to Cahokia by Timothy R. Pauketat and going to start on The Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich today as well.

Cahokia sounds interesting. I think I recall it being mentioned in 1491.

It's a really neat subject. I grew up being (happily) carted to a whole lot of burial mounds but I'd never bothered to add that subject/those cultures to my reading interests. Cahokia is quite a short book, probably just for the general interest reader.

I've seen criticisms that there are no illustrations in the book (though these days at least it's easy to look them up). Someone on Amazon said it was far too dry, but I don't agree with that. I think sometimes people get too used to to the humorous skittering non-fiction (which I also enjoy) and forget that some subjects can't be covered in random bursts and packed to the gills with laughs.

I read that book in high school and I have never forgotten it more than 35 years later! Eye-opening book, for sure.

I started three books in September, that I'm still reading. Living the Questions: the wisdom of progressive Christianity, The Inklings of Oxford and American Tapestry: the story of the black, white, and multiracial ancestors of Michelle Obama. The Inklings book is very pictorial, and all are on my Nook Color.