• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Current Non-Fiction reads

At the moment I'm half way through Bad Blood, a memoir by Lorna Sage. Random book I bought from a charity shop a little while ago.
 
I just finished Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston. He's the hiker that got his hand trapped under a boulder and ended up having to cut it off to free himself after six days.
 
I'm reading Salt: A World History

It was given to me by a friend. At first I thought there was no way I'd like a book all about salt, but I'm really enjoying it. It's actually quite fascinating to learn about how big of a role salt played in world history.

I like it so much that I already bought one of Mark Kurlansky's other books: Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

So if anybody has any pressing questions about salt or cod, I'm your woman.
 
What non-fiction book are you reading now?

I checked out Dispatches from the Edge by Anderson Cooper. I had no idea that he was related the famous Vanderbilt family on his mother's side. I've read David Brinkley's book, as well as Bob Schieffer's. I'd have to say that media personallities don't churn out the most exciting books to read, but this one is quite different. Cooper details amazing things that just sound unreal from Sri Lanka, Bosnia, and Iraq. A good read that I recommend for others. :)
 
Finished The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, started but abandoned something called Virgins Of Venice about 16th Century Venetian convents, and I'm now on Istanbul, memoirs by Orhan Pamuk.
 
Last non-fiction read was Freakonomics. Meh. Next is either going to be Fast Food Nation or a history book called For Honour's Sake about the War of 1812. Apparently the Canadians did not win as definitively as we thought we did and the Americans have it wrong because they have most of history wrong. ;)
 
ions said:
Last non-fiction read was Freakonomics. Meh. Next is either going to be Fast Food Nation or a history book called For Honour's Sake about the War of 1812. Apparently the Canadians did not win as definitively as we thought we did and the Americans have it wrong because they have most of history wrong. ;)
Click to expand...

We didn't win the War of 1812? Oh well..at least we got an impossibly hard to sing national anthem out of the deal:rolleyes:
 
ions, didn't like Freakonomics? Why?

I liked it a lot - I simply hadn't thought of things the book brought up, and hadn't thought of it the same way as the book had presented it, and I thought that was worth the price of admission in itself.

I especially liked the theory of his on why there was a sharp decline in violent crimes in US, and the possibility of dying in a swimming pool is higher than that of being shot dead, and names dictating your destiny.

So many interesting ways of looking at different things.

I must say, though, that being in the IT profession, I find anything other than IT utterly fascinating, even things others consider silly. :)

ds
 
A few non-ficts that I'd like to read, haven't researched much on them however:

The Mommy Myth: the idealization of motherhood and how it has undermined all women

The Mask of Motherhood: how becoming a mother changes our lives and why we never talk about it

Mother Shock: Loving Every (other) Minute of it

It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons.

I have a four year old, so I've got to read these now and hope they offer some sort of comfort. :confused:
 
jennifer1975 said:
A few non-ficts that I'd like to read, haven't researched much on them however:

The Mommy Myth: the idealization of motherhood and how it has undermined all women

The Mask of Motherhood: how becoming a mother changes our lives and why we never talk about it

Mother Shock: Loving Every (other) Minute of it

It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons.

I have a four year old, so I've got to read these now and hope they offer some sort of comfort. :confused:
Click to expand...


For comfort you need the late, great Erma Bombeck!
 
abecedarian said:
For comfort you need the late, great Erma Bombeck!
Click to expand...

I read "The grass is always greener over the septic tank" and remember laughing my butt off. It's been a long time, I also remember a christmas story of hers also. I've been meaning to check out her other stories, thanks for reminding me.
 
'One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance '

I'm in the middle of 'One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance' by philosopher-turned-controversialist Christina Hoff Sommers and psychiatrist Sally Satel.

Pretty shocking so far - I'm a new parent and the thought of handing my daughter over to this 'new and improved' American school system kinda scares the crap out of me. Anyways.. the book is pretty controversial and I guess not everything happening behind closed American school doors is as horrifying as the two authors intend to make people believe. At least that's what I'm trying to tell myself. ;)
 
Still reading my Dracula: Prince of Many Faces book...even though I'm reading other things at the same time. The problem is that I mostly read at school and when people saw that I was reading about Dracula, and that I insisted he was once a real person, they began to suggest that I had mental problems. So...I got a little irritated and started bringing fiction to school again. It's hard to get comfy reading at home, so Dracula has been neglected a bit. Which is a pity because it's quite interesting.
 
I've got Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings clamouring for my attention. I'm about half done with it. I'll probably read a book on Ancient Egypt once I finish this one.
 
I finished a few days ago Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity: it was a pretty cold view of evolution, comparing people to machines whose only purpose is to reproduce :rolleyes:

Now I'm reading Mary Midgley's Beast and Man, which is a kind of rebuttal to Monod and everyone else (Dawkins) who thinks genes are everything in our life. Midgley, unlike social reformers, accepts that Man has a nature (so we're not all Blank Slates), but she wonderfully explains why this shouldn't be equated with biological determinism.
 
I am really enjoying Valley of the Kings right now. It is very informative and I can see why it is considered a classic work even though it was originally published back in 1981.
 
Beast and Man is finished, and I recommend it to everyone.

I've also finished the last pages of Susan Sontag's On Photography, which was a bit boring so I was always making pauses.

And now I'm reading Paul Davies' The Last Tree Minutes, which imagines how the universe might end. It's fun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top