What book is everyone reading at the moment?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Just finished, I am Legend, by Richard Matheson. It was intense and tedious but not bad. I haven't seen the movie but it appears to differ considerably.

The interesting thing about the book was it included a skeptical theme and it was written in 1954 (despite the link to a book published in 97). There were references to the guy looking for a rational explanation for vampires despite the temptation to find a religious explanation. I don't want to give away the book by telling you what he found, but the main character was looking for, among other things, a rational reason the vampires were repelled by the Christian cross. He also looked for rational reasons some bodies disintegrated when a wooden stake was put through their heat and why wood worked when other materials didn't.

These vampires were the result of infection, BTW. That was the premise of the story from the beginning. The author gets a bit of the infectious disease and physiology science wrong, but that is easily overlooked. The main thing is the majority of the story is this guy's dialog with himself. If you don't like that kind of slow moving story, you won't like the book. But if you don't mind, then the skeptical theme in the story makes the book a good one for JREF fans.

Now I've started Valerie Plame's book. I'll let you all know how that one is but so far it looks good.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, to my son, pretty much every night.

Young kids really love repetition.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

Finished the other book in a day.

I have heard the author speak about the book. Incompetency of the Bush regime pounded home with coffin nails. It's incredible what you don't hear about on CNN.

 

[Camwe_R.]

Now The Theory of Almost Everything by Robert Oerter. Very nice but like most popular treatments, avoids any math.

One of my favorites that I'll be going back to for the 4th time, the 2 volume set of
The Outline of History by H.G. Wells, this book I wish I could've been assigned in school instead of being given a long lecture/tirade of why the American Indians got what they deserved. I went to school in liberal New York City. What I was taught (crammed down my throat) would've made any conservative swell with pride.

What I really like but have a stupid hard time finding is hard science science fiction. Science fiction that is not the gloomy Blade Runner type. Old fashioned I know but the optimistic tone of the Original Star Trek, or a good old Kirby comic book went a long way to influencing many people.

 

[Ladyhawk]

Whatever you do, don't run

"Whatever you do, don't run...True tales of a Botswana Safari Guide " by Peter Allison. Great read comprised of mostly short (and hilarious) stories about this gentleman's adventures in Africa. The title of the book comes from the notion that anything that runs is likely to be 'food'....therefore, one should not run when confronted with a tiger, cheetah, etc.

Very enjoyable book. Has some impressive pictures, as well.

 

[Spidey13]

The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver

300 by Frank Miller

 

[Terry]

A Hat Full Of Sky by Terry Pratchett.
And about a metric ton of Windows programming books, thanks to the new job...

 

[headscratcher4]

had a great opportunity to do some reading over the holidays...

Young Stalin...very interesting, if making him seem a little more heroic than just a psychopathic thug...

World Without End...Ken Follett. Follow-up to Pillars of the Earth. Enjoyable sequal but not great lit.

My Father's War, very interesting story by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and her discovery that her father was a spy during wolrd war II and her effort to get the info out of him before Alzheimer's destroyed his memory.

Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon...a fun Venice based detective proceedural.

Now reading Monkey Girl about ID, the Wedge Strategy and Dover School controversy. Very interesting and scary.

 

[sackett]

Just finished Afrika Korps in the old Balantyne Books series on WW 2 (later it became History of the Violent Century; guess they found a good horse and rode it). This came out in 1968, when a lot of the survivors were still alive. Hell, a few of those young guys in the illustrations are around yet!

I've found that those old BB paperbacks, for all their tiny type, dim photos, and dicey copy-editing, are good and valuable reads. Many of the authors were veterans of the actual events, and they put in details that later historians don't always bother with, including some of the dirt. Betcha don't know who really invented the jeep! Ever hear of Monty's private B-24?

 

[jimbob]

"The Wealth of Nations", interesting because Adam Smith is describing the transition from a medieval economy to one that is recognisable as "modern" with paper money, bank runs, stock markets etc.

He also had a good explainiation for the decline in the feudal system;

If there is little available to buy, because there are only "rude manufactures" then any wealthy person will have an excss of wealth that will only be available to spend on sustaining a large retinue, and such a person will have an authority, and indeed will have nothing better to do with a lot of their wealth than to distribute largesse.

If luxuries become available, the rich can get very inventive in spending their wealth, and so reduce the amount of largess they distribute.

 

[Francesca R]

"North Korea" by Bruce Cumings

 

[Wildy]

I have heard the author speak about the book. Incompetency of the Bush regime pounded home with coffin nails. It's incredible what you don't hear about on CNN.

I heard about it on The Daily Show a couple of years ago now. It actually was a quite good book. At times though you want to punch people.

 

[headscratcher4]

Just finished Corrupted Science by John Grant. Excellent. Am now reading Imperial life in the Emerald City -- brings home all the more what a disaster the Bush Administration planning for post-invasion iraq was. But a very good read, so far.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Still reading Plames book but I also started "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein as an audio book while commuting. This just ties all the pieces together of what I have come to believe about Kissinger, Nixon, Reagan, Rumsfeld and the whole corporatocracy doctrine of the US. If you want to know, 'what were they thinking?', as you read "The Imperial life in the Emerald City", this book will fill you in. It also ties in what was written about in "The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins.

 

[Andronicus]

Einstein, His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. About halfway through and so far its excellent.

 

[SusanB-M1]

The Bible - A Biography by Karen Armstrong. Interesting, but I'll have to listen to it again if I want to take it all in better.
It's the CD audio version, read by Josephine Bailey who, it says on the back of the CD box, has won awards for her reading ... which is fast, smooth, clear; just right in fact.
However, although I would not wish to cast aspersions or anything, I can't help wondering whether it is in fact one of the new synthesised voices as there is a certain 'catch' to it. Does anyone know for sure? Can't find out on Google, but I'm not good at lookng.

 

[CptColumbo]

Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson

The backstories of the passengers and crew of the SS Minow. Lot's of references to 50s and 60s pop culture, but some of the actions of the protaganists seem out of character (based on what we know of them from the series).

 

[JonWhite]

How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich.

Better late than never.

 

[Terry]

The Garden of Unearthly Delights by Robert Rankin

Windows Vista Annoyances and Learning Cocoa with Objective C from O'Reilly.

and still chewing through a huge stack of Windows programming books.

 

[sackett]

Timebends, Arthur Miller's autobiography, published when he was 72. He must have assumed it would be his last word, but then he went and lived to be 89.