March 2012, What are you reading?

Still working on Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen from last month.

I got two bargain books on Kindle, Country Music Originals and Chop Suey, which I'm looking forward to.

The Family That Couldn't Sleep, about prions and their pathologies.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot which is a nice blend of biography, science and history.

Still reading Constantine's Sword. It is really good.

I'm not sure "liked" is the right word for Constantine's Sword but it was a very important book for me as it opened my eyes to things that I had been raised with in Christianity which were, intentionally or not, anti-semitic. I read another book by Carroll and disliked it. I don't think I agree with his interpretation of Christian history. But Constantine's Sword is definitely something everyone should read.

I've just returned to listening to the middle section of The Warmth of Other Suns, which is proving kind of a haul to get through as there are four threads at once - three individual stories, and a general historical background one.

I agree that Constantine's Sword is eye-opening. I'm not very far into it (he's still covering his own past), but I'm really enjoying the narrative style. I read a lot of history, and not all if it is this easy to read.

The Power of Babel, a nice discussion of languages and how they change.

Just finished Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen and in a few minutes I'm going to start on Flu by Gina Kolata.

I just finished Strange Relation by Rachel Hadas. It was excellent. A very educated/poetic memoir. In honor of the coming of baseball season, I'm also planning on reading a few baseball nonfiction books this month - maybe I'll finally get to Moneyball.

Finished This is not the End of the Book which was very good (working on a review) and Why Translation Matters which was a real mess of a book (review on the work page).

Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das

Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain I love it--since I'm an introvert working in groups and cubicles!

Finished Flu and am starting on The Information Diet (an Early Review book).

Finished my Early Review book The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson (it was horrible). Will start on another Early Review book, Straphanger by Taras Grescoe, next.

Vanished Kingdoms which so far is very good.

Three short books over the weekend -- Girl Land, Literary Brooklyn and How We Do Harm. All highly recommended. I particularly enjoyed Literary Brooklyn as a former resident of the borough, although I lived way out near Flatbush where few writers ever penetrated. (In fact, a lot of the current "Brooklyn" scene is just Manhattan transferred to Park Slope, seems to have nothing to do with the neighborhoods.) But it brought back a lot of memories and apparently I walked hundred of times past the block on which Bernard Malmud's father once had a store and never knew.
How We Do Harm is a book I've been looking for for a long time -- great discussion of things that never got brought up in the so-called health care debate. Not only about the uninsured, but also how the insured get overtreated and overbilled, how people want to believe in certainties (screenings save lives, more chemo saves lives), how little understanding there is of science by the public and even many doctors.

I'm reading, and enjoying, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us by James W. Pennebaker

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer! Very interesting read that couples great little stories with great experiments and a pinch of science to make a good read.

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macintyre (Excellent!) and The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage by Eric Frattini (Pretty good).

Just finished an Early Reviewer Straphanger by Taras Grescoe and loved it. Next I'll start on The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Finished reading The Myth of Choice and found it to be a very readable discussion of choice, noting the American love affair with freedom of choice, how political stances associate themselves with it to gain support, how often choices are not really choices. Much of the book describes the various ways that our choices are limited by biology, culture, economics, etc. The author then makes suggestions as to how to gain more control over our choices and how public policy could help. I found the book very clear and thought provoking.

I finished Constantine's Sword, which I thought was great and really thought-provoking. I'd really like to read an account of the same history written by a Jewish scholar.

Now I'm on to a somewhat-related book: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The first half seems to be a lot like Survival in Auschwitz or Night, and the second half is more philosophical. It's also excellent so far.

Recently completed - Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul M. Barrett. Fascinating book, and whole-heartedly recommended.

Currently - on page 655 (of 1040) of Robert A. Caro's superb Master of the Senate, which is volume 3 in his epic political biography of Lyndon Johnson. Having read volumes 1 & 2, and now nearing completion of the 3rd, you might guess that I'm pretty darn excited about the publication of volume 4 on May 1st, and the news of a 5th (and final?) volume in 2-3 years time.

I'm just finishing Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury, which was almost a perfect book and really interesting.

I'm also about 100 pages into A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas Basbanes. It's good so far, but rather scattered and unfocused, making it difficult for me to get into.

I just started Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Bedell Smith and am finding it very interesting so far. But I still have a long way to go.

I'm about halfway through The Fear by Peter Godwin and I'm finding it tough going. Not just because of the subject matter (which is horrifying) but because I find myself wishing I could hear one person's story in more depth instead of five people's stories in less. I want to know what happens to some of these people. I get that Godwin is telling a different story, but I wonder if his larger point wouldn't be more effectively made with fewer stories more thoroughly told.

Last week I finished The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith which was a beautiful, touching memoir of one woman's grief from losing both parents by the time she was 25. One of the best memoirs I've ever read. It's hard to believe it was her debut work.

I'm most of the way through Eric Weiner's Man Seeks God - if you didn't like The Geography of Bliss, you won't like this one; I did like it, feeling this one's overall not as good, though it has its moments.

I just finished Hemingway's Boat and enjoyed it although I am hesitant to recommend it because if you don't like Hemingway and you are not comfortable with a writing style that jumps around in time and obsessively follows the small details of lives that intersected with Hemingway's, you'll put it down in disgust. I'm neutral about Hemingway so I just surrendered to the quirks of the book and went with the flow.

Just finished and reviewed The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, an oral history of life in the Soviet Union. An excellent book.

I finished Awakening the Buddha Within and loved it (5 stars) and then followed that up with my Early Reviewer book The Man Who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins (also 5 stars) and hope to continue my streak of non fiction exellence with Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick (which came highly recommended and indeed, so far, is great).

Nothing to Envy is truly outstanding -- easiest five stars I've ever given!

I finished an LTER Winnie and Gurley this afternoon. It is essentially the memoir of a family, the couple of the title being the author's grandparents. It presents Winnie as the author knew her from his childhood and the slow revealing of the family secret over the next 40 or 50 years. After a concentrated effort of putting all the pieces together, the book then presents the lives of Winnie and Gurley beginning to end. I was a little disappointed that the second half did not reveal much additional information, just more straightforwardly presented. I enjoyed the book for its exploration of ancestors as real people from their perspective as much as possible. So often ancestors are only seen as known by their children which is necessarily colored and lacking.

I'm just starting Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg

Just starting The Bounty by Caroline Alexander. Sorry, Clark Gable, but I'm getting the real story now!

A quarter through Dining with Al-Qaeda. So far, (up to 2001) 'excellent.

Fnished my Feb ER, Why rattlesnakes rattle and my latest member giveaway The wisdom of heart health, both good. Reading Martin's Hundred : the discovery of a lost colonial Virginia settlement. The book pre-dates the discoveries at Jamestown by a number of years. So far, it's dense reading but very interesting.

Currently reading Nancy Goldstone's newest, The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc.

Finished The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and will start on The Story of English by Robert McCrum next.

I'm a ways into England's Mistress by Kate Williams. I've seen some criticism of it online, but I don't really agree with them so far (and my only criticism is that the audiobook reader really isn't very good).

I've finished The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England and I am now reading An Intimate History of Humanity but I only started it a couple of days ago and won't be able to finish it this month.

Finished The Perfect Square. This was an excellent history of Rittenhouse square and a neighborhood. With quotes from diaries and histories, descriptions of people, and numerous pictures, the history is brought to life. As such it also provides a peak at the history of Philadelphia as a whole. A very enjoyable, readable, and informative book.