November 2013 - non-fiction reads

I've just finished the very excellent and moving memoir by Uri Avneri - 1948: A Soldier's Tale. My review is here

My current reading includes The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-first Century by Alex Prud'homme, The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer is Wrong by Chris Anderson and David Sally, Napoleon's Wars by Charles Esdaile, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States by James Oakes, and Sea of Faith by Stephen O'Shea. Lots of good reading here. :)

I'm still listening to Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn. I'm not crazy about the writing style or the narrator, but the story itself is interesting. The only other book I've read about Manson is Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, and that was years ago.

Reading The Voynich manuscript : the mysterious code that has defied interpretation for centuries. Interesting. I am also reading New plants from old since I have some old plants that don't look well at all. Finished The UltraMind solution and need to write my review.

I recently finished At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene by Nat Hentoff. For jazz fans or people interesting in learning about jazz, this book is a series of essays on a wide range of subjects, from jazz history to portraits of the music's most influential and inspirational figures, to Hentoff's conjectures about where the art form is heading. Hentoff is one of jazz writings great figures.

I'm just starting Let Me Get This Off My Chest: A Breast Cancer Survivor Over-shares by Margaret Lesh. The title says everything you need to know about what the book is about. I had seen the book a few times but when I came across it on a blog and read an excerpt--I was hooked. I can't wait to read it.

I'm reading Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics by Michael Ignatieff.

Having wrapped up Eminent Victorian Chess Players and The Wedding Book: Alternative Ways to Celebrate Marriage, I'm now on to Alchemist of the Golden Dawn and Experiments in Topology.

I'm reading The Toy Story which is the biography of Frank Hornby. He kept several generations of small boys (and a few small girls) entertained with his enterprises.

Just returned from family trip to Ottawa. Read The Longer I'm Prime Minister on the way back for a political update ... and a distraction from the noise in Washington. Now switched to art history for a rather good biography of Lawren Harris from the Group of Seven: Inward Journey.

That should be Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris not that indicated in prior post with same name.

I'm nearly done with The Vikings: A New History by Neil Oliver, which is quite enjoyable.

I just finished The War that Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander which I HIGHLY recommend. I don't have a special interest in the Iliad or Homer or ancient Greece but found the book fascinating.

I read Lean In this month and also a memoir about anxiety attacks called Learning to Breathe. The first was excellent and the second very mediocre.

I've finished The Toy Story , but I'm not sure it's a good example of the biographer's art. As much a biography of his invention, Meccano, as of the man. And while in my childhood the name Hornby meant trans they get barely a look in.
Not dreadful, but not one I can see myself returning to.

I received Changing the Way We Die as a LTER. It tried to cover a massive topic with examples. As such, the book was appropriately human and personal but it left me wondering how different the message would have been with different examples. Despite that, it made me think and dispelled various misconceptions I had about hospices so it fulfilled its goal perfectly.

Just started 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. I wanted to read 1491 first, but there's no unabridged audio version, and my hands are just too unhappy about holding books even fort tiny bits of time lately.

I'm still reading the Esdaile and Oakes books I mentioned upthread. I'm also reading The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution by Alex Storozynski, Fragile Empire by Ben Judah, and Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget by David Wessel.

>16 mabith: I really enjoyed that one although I haven't read 1491 yet either. I have it on my bookshelf, but got 1493 first and later found 1491 at a used book sale. Too bad there isn't an unabridged audio.

I'm just starting Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power by Robert D. Kaplan

18 - I am definitely enjoying it, sometimes my brain just gets in that "no, must read in order..." silliness. I am reveling in all the Jamestown info (one of my ancestors was one of the few survivors of the original group), which you don't usually get due to the horrific nature of... everything.

Started The Man Who Loved China

22, I read that and found it fascinating. Enjoy!

I'm almost done with the book on Kosciuszko, still working on Fragile Empire, and I've started Catastrophe 1914 by Max Hastings and Dark Pools by Scott Patterson.

I finished a truly quirky book that I happened upon while going through my library's new acquisitions shelf recently: How to Disappear by Duncan Fallowell, where he takes up the trail of "whatever became of ..." a few peripherally famous individuals. The section on the fellow who was the actual Sebastian in "Brideshead Revisited" got a bit bogged down for me, but otherwise I can highly recommend the book for folks who think the premise sounds interesting.

I just finished You Are Now Less Dumb by David McRaney and a little ways into Mary Boleyn by Alison Weir.

I'm reading Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello Di Cintio for a book club discussion.

I'm in the middle of The Captured by Scott Zesch, about non-native children taken into Native American tribes.