I never get to read as much as I want to. There are SO MANY books that I want to read. School and its required reading has been slowing me down. It's been 6 months since I last posted what I have been reading for fun and I am a little surprised at how little I've managed to read in that time. I've been trying to shake things up a little by reading a little more fiction, particularly "classic", meaning older and hopefully not crappy, fiction of various types, but nothing really heavy like War and Peace or Atlas Shrugged or Of Human Bondage. I'm sure these are great books, but they hold little appeal to me. I need to use reading as an escape more often, like I did when I was younger. Non-fiction is informational and interesting, but I need to try and use my recreational reading more as recreation rather than education. I was hooked on cheap Conan novels for several years and the guy at the nearby used bookstore was happy to assist in feeding my addiction. They knew me well there. Good times. More fiction seems to be good for me and my mental health. And its free. Hard to beat that combo. So, here they are, in chronological order:
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral - Barbara Kingsolver
Another "crunchy" book. A family moves to rural Appalachia and decides to go for a year eating only locally produced food. Apparently Kingsolver is famous for her earlier highly-acclaimed novel, The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family that moves to Africa and I suppose that I may eventually read it.
The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford
A mass media economics books. Its the kind of book about economics that you might read if you aren't all that interested in economics. I would have learned something if I had read this a few years ago.
The Lost City of Z : A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon - David Grann
I love (LOVE! LOVE!) reading books like this and was thrilled when I saw that the library had this book on order. I immediately put in on hold and waited patiently for it to arrive. It's real-life Indiana Jones stuff. Buried treasure, lost cities, the Amazon jungle in the 1920's, world-famous British explorer vanishes. Smashing good time, old boy! More! I want more! Bring me more! I demand it!
Voodoo Histories : The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History - David Aaronovitch
Interesting, but I didn't agree with some of his conclusions and was a bit confused about the conspiracy theories that the author chose to not address. Some of his arguments were poor and made little sense. I wanted to like this book and it sounded promising, but I wasn't impressed.
A bunch of books on medicine and doctors in the Middle Ages, like Daily Life During the Black Death by Joseph P. Byrne. This wasn't for fun (humanities class), but I learned a couple of interesting things.
Green, Inc. : An environmental insider reveals how a good cause has gone bad - Christine MacDonald
Another disturbing book that told me some things that I already suspected and some more things that I didn't. Kind of a bummer, but good to know.
The island at the center of the world : the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America - Russell Shorto
I ended up not finishing this book. I ran out of time and had to get it back because someone else had reserved it. I would like to finish this book. I do love history and this is a much deeper look at what has turned into one of the most important cities in the world. Very well written and researched.
Little house on a small planet : simple homes, cozy retreats, and energy efficient possibilities - Shay Salomon
More tiny house stuff. Always cool to see what's new and different ideas. Some day...
Free-range kids : giving our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry - Lenore Skenazy
Super awesome book! More people need to read this book. Not just people with kids either. It shows that the world really isn't such a scary place for kids and things aren't actually getting worse. We just talk about scary things more and are consequently more scared. Really. It helps that this book is fun to read.
There Was an Old Woman - Ellery Queen
I can remember reading and watching (Channel 55 was the shiznit!) a lot of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Ellery Queen mysteries when I was young. I hadn't read a mystery novel in a very, very long time and decided to give it another go. I really like 1920s and 1930s settings and language in books, I'm not sure why. I think it's far enough removed in time from my own personal experiences that it is somewhat of a curiosity yet still very familiar. It does help if it is fun and easy to read like this one. I had no real clue who the killer was even though all the evidence had been presented. I'll probably read some more Ellery Queen books. Eventually.
Q.E.D.: Queen's experiments in detection - Ellery Queen
I got this one after reading the prior book. It's a collection of short stories and they don't work nearly as well as a novel length book. I only read about half of it before returning it.
You can't eat GNP : economics as if ecology mattered - Eric A. Davidson
Very well done and fairly short book on the basics of ecological economics. I'm still reading this one.
And then there were none - Agatha Christie
The Ellery Queen novel got me excited about mysteries and I decided to expand a little within the genre. This book happened to be available at the branch library that is only a 10 minute walk from my house so I decided to get it. Set in the late 1930's, this is Christie's best selling novel ever. A fun and fast read that left me wanting more. I had a good idea who the murderer was before the end, but there were still some twists that I never saw coming. Excellent.
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I checked this book out about 4 or 5 months ago and never got enough time to read it. I just got it again yesterday and am several chapters into it right now. Fascinating story of triumph over adversity for a woman who grew up as a Muslim girl with few rights in several African and Middle Eastern countries, her eventual escape to the Netherlands, and her refusal to submit to a religion she never really believed in. After this book she wrote a screenplay which was made into a film titled Submission. This film ended up getting it's Dutch director/producer, Theo van Gogh, killed and has resulted in continuous death threats have been made against her ever since. It's a pretty interesting story so far and has been hard to put down.
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie
I wanted to try a Christie novel that featured her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. I haven't started this one yet. I have high hopes.
There are probably a couple others that I'm forgetting. And I still haven't gotten around to reading Progress and Poverty or the Noam Chomsky book I've been trying to read for over a year now.
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