April Reading....what's yours?

I'm reading When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I find it hard to think of humour as nonfiction, but I guess the fact that things are true is often what makes them funny.

I think of memoir as a sort of "autonomous" subset of non-fiction.

Am reading Waste and Want for a Nonfiction group read.

Working on The last Season at the moment.

Andy

I'm still listening to Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea on audio.

Not sure what I will read this month when I have time. Have to do my required reading for the month first.

I've started The Making Of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr (read the other one and watched both TV series - he's excellent) and A Life Stripped Bare which is about attempting ethical living and is well done although making me feel a bit guilty. I will BookCross it though!

Hopefully I'll get to Descartes' Bones this month .

I'm going to be starting one of Stephen Jay Gould's books this week - either Wonderful Life or Ever Since Darwin. It's spring! I'm feeling like a little natural history.

I just finished War is a Force that gives us Meaning. Fascinating book.

Just starting Into Danger by Kate Adie.

I'm reading Streetwise Spanish, and so far it's excellent. I'm an advanced Spanish speaker, and this is a perfect level of difficulty for me. Would also be good for intermediate speakers.

I'm reading Defending a Contested Ideal: Merit and the PSC of Canada, 1908-2008 by Luc Julliet for a book club.

I've started Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton and this looks to be very promising!

I'm reading The Strange Case of Hellish Nell: The Story of Helen Duncan and the Witch Trial of World War II by Nina Shandler

I'm reading The Civil War: Red River to Appomatox by Shelby Foote. I seem to be on a Civil War/19th Century American History kick.

Currently Stones Into Schools, but I'll finish a middle-school book tonight and then start Travels With Charley for book club.

I'm reading Godel, Escher, Bach which is fascinating but a challenge. Sometimes it makes my head hurt, sometimes I loose him but so far if I keep reading I catch up again. Could slow down my pursuit of my 1010 challenge, however.

I just finished Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. I just got back from Italy and it the book was a wonderful way to relive the whole Vatican Museum - Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms!

I've started Watching The English.

Right now a best selling golf memoir by Josh Karp. It's funny, inspirational, and unlike a lot of sports books out there.

I'm reading Discovering Your Personality Type by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson. It uses the enneagram indicator of nine personality types.

I am reading two books right now. One is The Most of P. G. Wodehouse by (of course) P. G. Wodehouse. The other is The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill.

My latest nonfiction read is Who Cooked the Last Supper? the women's history of the world by Rosalind Miles.

Manituana by Wu Ming is my main read while I have The Elegance of the Hedgehog in the car as an emergency read.

I'm currently reading John Viega's provocatively titled The Myths of Security: What the Computer Industry Doesn't Want You to Know.

I'm reading Upwardly Mobile, the autobiography of Norman Tebbitt, an old Tory of the Thatcher Years. Purely for research, I hasten to add!

I am now reading Discontinuity in Greek Civilization by Rhys Carpenter. I saw it on LT.

I finally finished Godel, Escher, Bach. It is a fascinating book. It is an intertwining look at logic, philosophy, consciousness, music, art, biology, computers, and countless other topics through the prism of concepts of uncertainty, incompleteness, and self reference. While reading it, I was astonished at how many things came up, that the book suggested a new way to consider.

Written in the 1970's some information in biology, computers, and physics could not include some of the most recent understandings so was dated. I found some of the number theory chapters more obtuse than I was willing to struggle with but I was always rewarded with a new insight if I persevered.

I'm reading The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester for a book club.

#30 I just picked it up at the library. It demanded to be taken home.

>29 snash:, that sounds very interesting. Some people just do not get that non fiction can be as enthralling and page-turning as fiction.

I'm reading Waste and Want and have also churned through The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Boton in a scarily short space of time. It is such a good read and will be getting a 5 star rating from me I'm sure. He weaves his philosophical musings around the day to day lives of people in various lines of work. Each chapter is centered around one occupation but have no fear if that occupation doesn't interest you, as there are plenty of "looking at the bigger picture' hooks as well as very personal reflections in each section.

#29 I bought Godel, Escher, Bach last week. It was one of those books that I have been meaning to buy for about twenty years. Your comments give me support in my decision to buy it (i.e. help me ignore my guilt at spending money) and prompt me to set it high up the tbr pile.

Godel, Escher, Bach is wonderful. It's the first book we read in my non-fic book group, and a good few books later, we still haven't found anything to match it. Currently working on making Metamagical Themas the next one!

I'm half-way through The End of Oil. It is excellent, even for such an "old" book (circa 2004?).

#25, what a great idea! My in-the-car book is Bad trips

I pretty much got no non-fiction read this month, unless you count Essential Zen, which is more of a collection of writings than a history or instructional book. Though, in the spirit of "the way", I suppose the writings are the same as instruction and history.....

Mmm.....I need a sand garden to contemplate this matter.....

#35
I hope the title of your "in-the-car" books has not significance other than being the title of a book.

:-)

#30, Lynn, #31, Jennie, how is it? I've seen it around and enjoyed Winchester's other works, but have been on the fence about it.

Just finished For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History by Sarah Rose. While not quite a page-turner, it was nonetheless interesting and informative. As a tea drinker, it was fun to see how modern tea came about.

I just got Hunting Pirate Heaven at teh library sale. I can't wait to read it! Though it is, I suppose, destined to be more of a May read.

#38, I can't say yet, bfertig, but I'll get to it soon since it's a library book. I just need to get my feet clear of the magazines . . .

Juggling two ...

The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes by Tom Parker Bowles

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin - very well narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris

I'm reading Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk for a book club, even though I won't be able to attend the discussion.

#38 I've finally started The Man Who Loved China, bfertig, and it's fascinating.

Wow. Nearly May and I haven't posted here yet.

Early this month I read Leon Stein's The Triangle Fire (the Touchstone seems to have disappeared, or else is buried in all weirdness).

I've spent the rest of the month reading Timothy Ferris's Seeing in the Dark. Don't read too much into how long it's taking me: I'm also nearly done knitting a lace shawl.

I'm still working on The Man Who Loved China. I'm reading it aloud to my husband on our daily commute, so we only get through about 20 pages a day.

I haven't posted in this sort of thread for a couple months but I'm back. Am about a quarter of the way through Nothing like it in the world and halfway through The Amazing adventures of the jewish people, about 50 pages into Wildfire and Americans and have leafed through the first few pages of Half Moon. Seems kinda random now that I think about it. I'm sure there were reasons for starting all these around the same time :)

#30, 331,#38,#44,#46
I think The Man Who Loved China is a great book about a great individual who fell in love with a Chinese woman visiting Cambridge, learned to speak several dialects of Chinese and taught himself how to write the language, lobbied the British government to be sent to China during World War II to determine how England could assist China in keeping open their Universities as Japan moved further into Eastern China and became fascinated with the history, technological advances and artistic works of the Chinese people and through many visits to China to explore the ancient Chinese people and their culture became China's historian by writing most of the majestic seventeen volume Science and Civilization in China. Ho hum, indeed, I liked it better than Krakatoa and almost as much as The Meaning of Everything.

#48 Wikipedia reports Science and Civilisation in China is now clocking in at 27 volumes!

I am more than halfway through Closing the Ring but have stopped to read The 188th Crybaby Brigade which is very funny.

Has just begun Texas Tough.

I've started on The Making of Modern London which is fascinating so far (it's the 1 volume version) after finishing the Norman Tebbit autobiog which was interesting in itself. Doing a real 20th century British history thing at the moment, as I've got Aneurin Bevan's biog (by Michael Foot) next on the non-fic list. Also reading one on the effect of Walmart on the economy / world in general - it's all the way downstairs and I don't remember the title but it seems good so far...

Started it just now so it will probably continue into May -- The Riddle of Amish Culture, by Donald B. Kraybill.

Just finished reading The Swamp: the Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise an excellent book about the nautral and political history of South Florida.

>54 jeanphilli: - o sounds like you liked it. ive had that one on my list for quite some time. I'm hoping to get to it this year.

Right now I am reading Blood Types, Body Types And You after getting way off track in my eating habits :}.

Am reading Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. In seemed a little shallow early on but feeling better now. It would probably be a drag if you didn't recognize the names of the hundreds of musicians he met and played with.

Started The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes, about Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Very interesting and well written.