Books I have read recently

[telophase]

Mostly on the Kindle in the UK.

Nonfiction

Drive, Daniel Pink
The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely
Packing for Mars, Mary Roach
The Art Detective, Philip Mould
The Folklore of Discworld, Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Germs, Genes, and Civilization, David P. Clark

Fiction

Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones
I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett
Penelope's English Experiences, Kate Douglas Wiggin
Cranford, Elizabeth Claghorn Gaskell

NetGalley

Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language from the Insect World, Marlene Zuk
The Sevenfold Spell, Tia Nevitt

There's a bunch of others that I've started and not finished yet. I'm a bit overloaded on NetGalley books right now. XD I have vague hopes of writing short reviews of these, but GAH there's a lot...

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Would you rec any of the nonfiction to me? I've had my eye on the Roach and the Ariely.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The Roach is a competent example of what she does, and so if you liked her other books, I'd rec this one to you. Ariely's book was also good - did you read his first one, Predictably Irrational? This one builds on that, but I don't think you'd have to have read the first to make sense of his arguments. It's also interesting in the way he discusses his own life and how events in his life (especially getting severely burned in his late teens) led him to choose his career path and his various experiments. Not appropriate in a textbook, but in a pop-sci book, it makes it more personal.

I'd also rec Bryson's book if you have the least little bit of interest in social or material history in the UK and US: it's mostly an excuse for him to ramble on about Stuff and how it developed over the past couple of hundred years, based on rooms in his English house and in its history. And Bryson does ramble entertainingly.

I'd rec Sex on Six Legs except that it's coming out next August, so you can't read it now if you're in the mood for entertaining nonfiction about bugs. :D