What book is everyone reading at the moment?

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Just finished "How We Believe" by Michael Shermer.
Starting "Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion" by Robert Von Rudloff
and
"100 Wicked Little Witch Stories."
 
You Suck by Christopher Moore. It's not nearly as amusing as Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, which I highly recommend.
 
"Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner

"The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" by Gould (been working on this one a long time -- gotta take breaks!)

"The Children of Hurin" by Tolkien
 
mrich said:
Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine, by R. Barker Bausell, Ph.D.

What if someone with impeccable academic credentials and years of experience in designing rigorous clinical trials turned this expertise toward CAM (complementary and alternative medicine)? What if this same person reviewed the controversial and contradictory literature of CAM for efficacy? What if this same person went the extra mile and helped to develop a credible placebo for, say, acupuncture?

Find out answers to all 3 questions in this book, written by the former Research Director of a National Institutes of Health-funded Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialized Research Center.

If I had 10 hands, I'd give this book all 10 thumbs up.
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Hi, mrich from Seattle. Harriet the SkepDoc from Puyallup raves about that book. Guess skeptigirl from Bellevue is going to have to read it soon.

BTW, the SkepDoc wrote recently to someone inquiring about improving one's ability to evaluate medical research, I don't think she'll mind me sharing this.
I have 3 suggestions for you to improve your ability to evaluate published research:
(1) Read "Snake Oil Science" by R. Barker Bausell. He has a lot to say specifically about acupuncture as well as excellent general principles.
(2) Read "Critical Thinking about Research" by Julian Meltzoff - I learned more from this book than anywhere else and I wish it were a textbook in every med school.
(3) Read the Science-Based Medicine blog at http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ It alone will gradually teach you everything you need to know, in painless doses, with reference to current issues. Another acupuncture study (in infertility) will be dissected there in the next few days.

Harriet Hall, MD
The SkepDoc
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and
I have just finished reading an advance copy of Rose Shapiro's book, "Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All." It is excellent and I highly recommend it. I'll be writing a book review for Skeptic magazine. She has consolidated a wealth of information in a book that is humorous and a delight to read. I learned a number of fascinating new facts about alternative medical silliness. I loved one of her illustrations: a photograph of a sign in a Chinese herbalist's window that mysteriously lost
an H and that reads: "Nature is your harmacy."

Thanks, Rose, for a most useful contribution. It goes on my short shelf of handy references.

Harriet Hall, MD
The SkepDoc
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I will have to at least read the Snake Oil book. I'm still reading Valerie Plame's book and having fun with the audio version of, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007) by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's abridged but at 6 cds long, I don't think he cut much out of the audio version. I wish they wouldn't make abridged audio books. There's no reason for it.
 
At the moment i am reading Anna Karenina and im finding it amazing it really goes into detail about the russian social structure and farming and also culture of the time i find tolstoy a brilliant and insitefull author and look forward to reading more of his work :)
 
I am re-reading The Scarlet Letter. Also, I am reading "Octopi" (Octopods? Ohtapodia?) by Cousteau. It's in Bulgarian. It's about octopuses.
 
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
It is a truly beautiful, though not necessarily uplifting book- originally written in Czech, but I am reading an English translation.
Does anyone here speak Czech/ read this book in Czech? I would be curious to have more insight on it, or to know how cleanly the concepts in it translate.

Oh yeah, and when I take breaks from that, I'm on "Alphege, or the Green Monkey" from Andrew Lang's "The Yellow Fairy Book." :)
 
acuity said:
"Why is Sex Fun?--The Evolution of Human Sexuality" by Jared Diamond
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I was reading his book "Guns, germs and steel"

He sure knows how to pen an appealing title ^^

ATM I'm reading "People in glass houses" by Tany Levin

To quote from its blurb
"An impassioned and witty expose of the Sydney phenomenon now known as Hillsong."

Any1 in Australia is aware of this influential church's doings in politics or even game shows ^^
 
I am currently reading Options by Fake Steve Jobs. It's a parody on Steve Jobs, as you can probably guess.
At times it seems that the jokes are getting a bit tired, constantly telling about his yoga and meditation and stuff, but there are enough little silicon valley refrances to keep me reading. The book does have it's laugh out loud moments as well.

The next book on my list (depending on my mood) will be either Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, or The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis.
 
myowninvention said:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
It is a truly beautiful, though not necessarily uplifting book- originally written in Czech, but I am reading an English translation.
Does anyone here speak Czech/ read this book in Czech? I would be curious to have more insight on it, or to know how cleanly the concepts in it translate.

Oh yeah, and when I take breaks from that, I'm on "Alphege, or the Green Monkey" from Andrew Lang's "The Yellow Fairy Book." :)
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I enjoyed that book but agree that it is challanging. Is there any idea that is confusing you?
For something more accessable by Kundera, The Joke is excellent.
 
phrenicgermal said:
I enjoyed that book but agree that it is challanging. Is there any idea that is confusing you?
For something more accessable by Kundera, The Joke is excellent.
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It's mostly the way he treats time, and the way it flows in relation to the narration that confused me at first, and still intrigues me immensely. I'm about three quarters of the way through now, and I've gotten used to it, but I still feel as though I need to read every chapter three times to catch every nuance. This isn't a complaint, mind you, I love how carefully the book can be read, how many things can be read into it. I just wonder, if it is so rich in it's translated form, how the book reads in its original language.
Thanks for the suggestion; I will have to look up The Joke, if I ever finish reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) Unbearable Lightness.
 
Just finished Robert Forwards "Dragon's Egg". Hard to describe without giving too much away, but basically, a neutron star develop life forms while a human research expidition is examining the star. The things on the star live their lifes at a highly accelerated time, and the bemused researchers makes contact with the creatures as they evolve from a barbarian, feudal society to ... something else.

It's a lot better than my desctription may indicate. I suck at writing :)
 
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I finished options, by face steve jobs, and frankly am glad to be done with it. It certainly had it's moments but too much of the book just wasn't that great.

I was going to start reading Fooled by Randomness, but I think instead I will read the book about my childhood hero, The Secret Life of Houdini (Houdini's habit of exposing spiritualists definatly influenced my world view).
 
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