What are you reading?

[nicruns]

What books are you all currently reading? It's always fun to see what everyone else is finding interesting right now. :)

I just finished Freakanomics and am starting Superfreakanomics today. I really enjoyed the first one. Funny but still informative.

[StrayDog]

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil

By Hannah Arendt.

[Kuky]

Just recently finished reading:

- Singapore (it's a murder mystery novel)
- My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Takes of Milton H. Erickson (various stories told by Erickson about his way to do therapy, etc.)

Currently Reading:

- Effective Java (you should basically not ever touch Java code to do anything serious unless you've at least skimmed this book)
- The Adventures of Anybody (holy shit, Bandler wrote a fable)
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

[StrayDog]

So... what IS the truth about our motivations?

[Kuky]

Hahaha. I'm only 1/5 of the way in. So far, the main focus has been that the traditional "carrots and sticks" approach to motivation (i.e. if-then rewards for good behaviour, and punish bad behaviour), the extrinsic variety, actually negatively affects people's performance when doing work that requires some sort of creativity, because it stifles the intrinsic motivation (enjoyment from actually doing said creative work). I'm looking forward to seeing when he goes with it. Hopefully, it's going to be more focused on applying those things on a personal level, than on motivating from a manager's perspective.

[nicruns]

Kuky, I'll have to pickup that motivation book from the library. It sounds like sounds really interesting from a teacher standpoint.

edit---- I see it's by Daniel Pink. Have you read "A whole new mind?" It's by him and there are some really good parts about what skills are going to be vital for the 21st century workforce.

[water nymph]

I have been on a super reading kick recently because I don't really have a job and have finally located the local public library. I've been working through a handful of graphic novels, mainly the Fables and Ex Machina series but also random ones I pick up on the side.

I'm currently reading:
Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey: It's a fantasy novel by one of my favorite fantasy authors but I am very let down by it because it seems that Carey is better suited to character driven books rather than sweeping epics. She also steals a lot from Tolkien, to the extent that it is too blatant to be an allusion.
Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman: This is the book that the movie The Duchess is based off and it is superb.

You guys should get goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/littlestarcapella) accounts to keep track of your books! It's a somewhat addicting way to keep track of what you read and to network with other readers- kinda like facebook for bookworms.

[Kuky]

Kuky, I'll have to pickup that motivation book from the library. It sounds like sounds really interesting from a teacher standpoint.

It might very well. It's a bit "meta" for my taste, though. So far, it's kind of like books by Malcolm Gladwell... Interesting topics that make you look smart during a relevant conversation, but nothing that I can actually USE.

edit---- I see it's by Daniel Pink. Have you read "A whole new mind?" It's by him and there are some really good parts about what skills are going to be vital for the 21st century workforce.

I haven't, but I'll have to look into it.

I also want to read both freakonomics books, and I have a whole pile of others on my queue... Pragmatic Programmer, Pragmatic Thinking, Fearless Change (it's actually about corporate changes), What Do You Care What Other People Think (another book about Feynman), Cryptonomicon, and a shit-ton of others.

I've even got a copy of Futureritual lying around that I want to get to. Deidre, I'm sure you've read that one. What did you think?

[automorphism]

Nothing but monographs and graduate textbooks these days:

Conlon, "Differentiable Manifolds"
Mac Lane, "Homology"
Cohen, "Groups of Cohomological Dimension 1"
Ramanan, "Global Calculus"

[Asphodelle13]

I just finished reading Duma Key from Stephen King. Might read Shutter Island or Just After Sunset next.

[water nymph]

Nothing but monographs and graduate textbooks these days:

Conlon, "Differentiable Manifolds"
Mac Lane, "Homology"
Cohen, "Groups of Cohomological Dimension 1"
Ramanan, "Global Calculus"

Are those even real things that you can actually read in books? Seriously?

[Deidre]

I haven't actually gotten to it either yet, Kuky. It's on the to-read list, but I've been off the NLP-ish books for some time because I got frustrated with being told to use these great practical methods I cannot do... like visualise, or imagine voices or sounds. :p

Right now I'm finishing off...
Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery by Russ Hudson and Don Richard Riso
Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind by Roger Walsh
Garden of Invention: The Stories of Garden Inventors and Their Innovations by George Drower
Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe

[Panda]

Why Can't We Be Good? -- Jacob Needleman

[automorphism]

Are those even real things that you can actually read in books? Seriously?

Seriously! Although it usually takes me an hour to read and understand four or five pages, so I've been reading them for a while now.

[Gezus]

Current reading list:
Graham Greene - The Tenth Man
Hervé Desbois - Etre zen un jour à la fois
Gabrielle Roy - Bonheur d'occasion
John Layfield - Have More Money Now: A Common Sense Approach to Financial Management
Alan Moore - Complete WildC.A.T.S

[Deidre]

New books!

Well... book. And it's a big one so it'll last a while:

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

Also got notice that another one I'm going to start reading will be arriving tomorrow:

The Other Side of Virtue: Where Our Virtues Come From, What They Really Mean, and Where They Might Be Taking Us by Brendan Myers

[nicruns]

The Other Side of Virtue: Where Our Virtues Come From, What They Really Mean, and Where They Might Be Taking Us by Brendan Myers

this sounds really interesting. Let me know what you think of it after you finish.

[Fusion Cuisine]

You guys should get goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/littlestarcapella) accounts to keep track of your books! It's a somewhat addicting way to keep track of what you read and to network with other readers- kinda like facebook for bookworms.

Ooooh I signed up :) I added about 60 books and then decided I need to organise my bookshelves...

[Rogue4Rent]

I'm reading Crowley's, The Book of the Law, on this the 106th anniversary of one of the holiest books ever written.

I'm also reading Thomas Harris' - Hannibal (his best book), J.G. Ballard's - Crash, and I read the local paper every morning.

[The Sage]

scarecrow - matthew reilly (again)

[yellow.rose]

Goodness, I'm so jealous of you people. Those are some good books there!

I started reading several books before starting, and during uni. I'm still in the middle of all of them :p Its pathetic, really. I think my brain is just pooped at the end of each day so turning on another program with Capt. Jean-Luc Picard is far more appealing than putting the time and mental energy into reading..

Anyway, these are some of the books I'm in the middle of:
Ireland by Frank Delaney
The Pity of It All by Amos Elon
The Mentor Book of Major American Poets Edited by Oscar Williams and Edwin Honig
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (gosh is that depressing and terrifying.. I don't know if I'll ever finish it)

I was able to finish The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov and Animal Farm somewhere during school. Loved both!

A recommendation: Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, fascinating! Its a play, the book is like 80 some pages so its a short but very pleasurable read. It is based on a historical event known to have occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and tells the story of what might have occurred on that fateful visit. Bohr had been like a father to Heisenberg, until their political views pulled them apart during WWII when Bohr worked for the Allies and Heisenberg for the Germans, on developing the Nuclear Bomb. They never spoke again after this visit.

[Rogue4Rent]

Rose, you may be interested in Irrational Man by William Barrett. It's the best overall view of, and explains in depth, the Existentialist movement.

You seem to be a philosophy / history nut as I am.

[yellow.rose]

Rose, you may be interested in Irrational Man by William Barrett. It's the best overall view of, and explains in depth, the Existentialist movement.

You seem to be a philosophy / history nut as I am.

I'll look that up! It does sound interesting :) I keep meaning to read Nietzsche and never get around to it. I am quite a history nut, philosophy less so. It interests me and I keep trying to read it but usually I find philosophy books long and tedious :p

[water nymph]

Ooooh I signed up :) I added about 60 books and then decided I need to organise my bookshelves...

It's addicting to add books and organize everything. Add me as a friend!

[chiukit]

Inorganic Chemistry by Shriver and Atkins.

Does that count?

[Rogue4Rent]

Inorganic Chemistry by Shriver and Atkins.

Does that count?

As a sleeping pill...

[automorphism]

Inorganic Chemistry by Shriver and Atkins.

Does that count?

It does if Introduction to Group Cohomology does...

[chiukit]

It's actually pretty interesting, if you're a chemist... you learn a lot about why some crystals act the way they do.

[/nerd]

[Deidre]

I'm giving The Illiad another go, in a very archaic-sounding Swedish translation that is turning out to be pretty darned good...

...while waiting for other books arrive (primarily a Beowulf verse translation side by side with the original Old English, and No Kid: Quarante raisons de ne pas avoir d'enfant by Corinne Maier).

this sounds really interesting. Let me know what you think of it after you finish.
The Other Side of Virtue was actually quite disappointing. I ordered it after listening to the author on several podcasts and hearing raving reviews about it, so I had high hopes. I thought it was far too brief on the topic of heroic age/classical age virtues and not structured enough. It inspired me to do more reading, but I wouldn't recommend it nearly as highly as it was recommended to me.

The Evolution of God however, was a brilliant read. Nothing terribly new (I mean, I knew Israelites and Arabs were polytheists and the influence of the Babylonian Exile), but it's very well written.