Books I have read recently

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...

(no subject)

When we were in London, we saw a large number of women wearing headscarves. Our hotel was near a Middle Eastern area, but even so, there were a large number, moreso than any trip I've taken to London previously. I even saw, over the course of the journey, eleven women wearing burqa.* I'd be interested in knowing the rate of increase in the Islamic population of London since 2003, the last time I was there.

(And you know, not a single one of them tried to blow me up!)

Two of the women I saw wearing headscarves on Oxford Street one night were young, perhaps even in their teens, had beautifully decorated scarves and, judging by the shapes underneath, elaborate, high hairstyles. Somehow the effect was, I suspect, not exactly what the originators of the headscarf rule had in mind. XD


(ETA: Via rydra_wong over on DW, the blog of the blog of UK hijabi designer Hana Tajima-Simpson. And, man, I am too darm short and round to wear that kimono-wrap maxi dress she's wearing in several photos, or I'd be whipping out the credit card right now...)


* For any wag who asks "How could you tell they were different women?" the answer is: different styles of burqa, different handbags, and accompanied by different families, when they weren't alone.