So what is everyone reading?

[Pyrotex]

I got a few books from Amazon as my christmas presents from me to me.

How the Mind Works -- Pinker

The Case For Mars -- Zubin

The Fabric of the Cosmos -- Greene

[Buffy]

Will the last book that i read was NEW MOON.....and will be starting on ECLIPSE.

...and if you just can't get enough, the first part of the unpublished fifth book is up on Stephanie Meyer's web site (because someone leaked it, and she wanted to get out ahead of it...)....

 

Just started in on Bill Bryson's "Shakespeare: The World as Stage" http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-World-Stage-Eminent-Lives/dp/0061673692/....

 

Before he came into a lot of money in 1839, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, led a largely uneventful life, :thumbs_up

Buffy

[san4os]

hello!

 

i'm reading Sherlock Holmes (in the bed), MassEffect Story (in the car), ActionScript3.0 (WC =))!!!

 

 

______________________________________

Coffee drinker tutorials

[BrianG]

The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell.

 

American Spectator

“An economic primer on the housing bubble, but more importantly, it is an examination of the ruling class's inability to leave well enough alone.”

 

The Washington Times

“For anyone looking for a straightforward and honest discussion of the

origins of our current crisis, informed by a deep understanding of both

economics and politics, The Housing Boom and Bust is required reading.”-

 

 

This is a plain-English explanation of how we got into the current economic disaster that developed out of the economics and politics of the housing boom and bust. The “creative” financing of home mortgages and the even more “creative” marketing of financial securities based on American mortgages to countries around the world, are part of the story of how a financial house of cards was built up—and then suddenly collapsed.

 

The politics behind all this is another story full of strange twists. No punches are pulled when discussing politicians of either party, the financial dangers they created, or the distractions they created later

to escape their own responsibility for what happened when the financial house of cards in the financial markets collapsed.

 

What to do, now that we are in the midst of an economic disaster, is yet another story—one whose ending we do not yet know, but one whose outlines and implications are explored to reveal some surprising and sobering lessons.

[Michaelangelica]

I haven't been reading a lot lately after being banned from the library for destroying a couple of their science magazines.

(Reading them in the bath was not my best idea).

But got Obama's book for Christmas and looking forward to reading that.

 

However i am here today because Amazon.com just sent me a list of their top ten science picks for 2009 and thought you might be interested.

They are listed here:-

Best Books of 2009: Science Top 10

[tekayo]

i am reading, or better yet, listening to brian tracy - how to master your time

it is incredibly worth it, lot of useful info

[Janus]

Let's see, for Christmas I got:

 

Destroyer of Worlds by Niven & Lerner

Unseen Academicals by Pratchett

from my wife.

 

1984 by Orwell

from my daughter

 

and

The Zombie Survival Guide

from my sister

 

I haven't decided which one to start first.

 

I just finished

Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black

[Buffy]

From my kid who is sick of me waking her up with random bursts of laughter at one AM...Craig Ferguson's "American On Purpose"...

 

Amazon.com: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot (9780061719547): Craig Ferguson: Books http://www.amazon.com/American-Purpose-Improbable-Adventures-Unlikely/dp/0061719544

 

...and we gave several copies of the Zombie Survival Guide to the teen boys in the family...

 

Muirfield Primary was loathsome but at least the violence only really came from the teachers. Cumbernauld High School, which I entered at the age of twelve, was a whole new box of crabs,

Buffy

[Turtle]

From my kid who is sick of me waking her up with random bursts of laughter at one AM...Craig Ferguson's "American On Purpose"...

Buffy

 

so you're the other one watching! i knew i felt a disturbance in the force. :)

 

oh...er uhh..i'm not reading anything. erhm...i'm reading nothing? but, i'm thinking of burning fuller's synergetics is a drunken paganesque rite that i make up as i go. :shrug:

 

if you're frightened of leprechauns, the best thing to do is to get yourself a little leprechaun outfit and see how big they are. and then you'll go, 'well i see. that's like bein' frightened of a hampster. :)

[BrianG]

Under the Dome was OK, I didn't love it.

 

 

Now I'm reading Going Rogue by Sarah Palin,

[Pyrotex]

For Christmas I got:

The Draco Tavern, by Larry Niven

which is an excellent bathroom book.

It's dozens of really short stories. Each takes about one potty break to read.

:)

[BrianG]

Finished Going Rogue by Sarah Palin, a great description of Palin's political beliefs and biography. Now I'm reading Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott. I'm not a big fan of these franchise collaborative works.

[Donk]

Currently I'm switching between

 

1) Butterfly Brain, a sort of autobiography by Barry Cryer:

"When Mozart was my age he had written 42 symphonies, 27 concertos and 16 operas. And had been dead for over 40 years."

 

2) 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain (paperback version "with added bankers!"), by Quentin Letts.

 

My family like to hear me chuckle :confused:

[Jet2]

Just finished:

Deep Simplicity - Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life by John Gribbin, and

Many Lifes Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss

 

Both are good.

[stereologist]

Almost done reading Tom Sawyer with my 8 year old. He reads as I read aloud. It's tough. I try to translate for him and say sad and he interrupts me to tell me that the word was melancholy. What amazes me is that he even pronounces the word correctly.

[Southtown]

Day of the Dragon, Richard A. Knaak, and bloody good so far.

[CraigD]

Read a couple of old-ish SF novels back-to-back: Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 Star Maker; and H.G.Wells’s 1914 The World Set Free.

 

The form of these novels – philosophical essay-like, with only occasional character development and narration like novels of the 1950s and later – takes a little getting used to, but once gotten used to, flows in a way that feels magical. Their subject is pure-and-simple utopianism: an end to war, nations, every intelligent being living optimally, etc. The mainstream market for this seems to have been heartier in the early 20th Century.

 

The World Set Free is often sited as the first fictional depiction of atomic bombings. Wells’s speculation is far off the mark, involving bombs that burn for decades or centuries, but little effects of radiation poisoning or fallout. His geography leads me to wonder if, in 1914, there was believed to be a continent under the arctic ice, as he describes the arctic as having “great mineral wealth”.

 

Between whatever I’m actively reading, I’ve been rereading for the uncounted time William Hope Hodgeson’s supernatural romantic sci-fi fantasy The Night Land. Written in a bizarre invented sort of future-neoelizabethan dialect, in my experience this is one of those book that provokes either fanatical devotion or a lack of motivation to read more than a dozen pages. I’m nostalgic about it because I read it as a teen, and did my first FRPGing in a milieu taken in part from it.