Many more books!
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I held off on reading this for a long time because descriptions mostly made me think, "Oh, boy! Another Southern coming-of-age story!" It is actually substantially more compelling than I anticipated, partly because it is placed in the 60's and issues of race, class, and gender are all at least touched upon, and partly because even without that, the protagonist's situation is somewhat more complex than the usual absent-mother-abusive father setup (although those elements are both part of it).
The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey. Yeah, I know. It's brain-candy, and this particular volume -- a mildly interesting take on the Sleeping Beauty story -- was neither startlingly good nor bad as such things go.
Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky. I had only read bits of Chomsky's work before getting to this, and it is just as intelligent and about as politically charged as I expected, and substantially less difficult to get through. I happen to have had a very liberal Spanish program in my high school that taught me a lot of Latin American history, which might have made the book, with its frequent references to U.S. aggression in that region, less surprising. The interesting point, to me, was that Chomsky sees both the Latin American aggression and the current campaigns in the Middle East as being motivated by a desire for ideological hegemony -- that is, the proliferation of Western political, social, and, importantly, economic systems.
The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn. It's like a chick-flick on paper, except that I didn't find the protagonist's "dilemmas" terribly compelling. It did, however, make me want to have a socially responsible job.
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt is, by now, famous for drawing connections and making comparisons between unlikely events or situations: the most famous of these is probably his conclusion that legalized abortion reduced crime in the U.S. The book is perfectly approachable and interesting because it is full of such improbable-sounding connections. However, as Levitt points out, correlation and causality are distinct. He discusses real-life situations exclusively, and in such cases, there is no way to control all the variables, so I was left entertained, but somewhat dubious about his conclusions.
Also, I think I forgot to mention The Glass Harmonica by Louise Marley last time. I picked this up at a used bookstore while waiting to meet someone, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The story centers around two glass harmonica players, one in the past --a fictional character who helped Ben Franklin create and test his "armonica" -- and one in the future. The stories themselves are both interesting, although I liked the future setting better, and I didn't sort out the connection between then (which, to the author's credit, is never stated explicitly) until quite late in the book.
The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey. Yeah, I know. It's brain-candy, and this particular volume -- a mildly interesting take on the Sleeping Beauty story -- was neither startlingly good nor bad as such things go.
Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky. I had only read bits of Chomsky's work before getting to this, and it is just as intelligent and about as politically charged as I expected, and substantially less difficult to get through. I happen to have had a very liberal Spanish program in my high school that taught me a lot of Latin American history, which might have made the book, with its frequent references to U.S. aggression in that region, less surprising. The interesting point, to me, was that Chomsky sees both the Latin American aggression and the current campaigns in the Middle East as being motivated by a desire for ideological hegemony -- that is, the proliferation of Western political, social, and, importantly, economic systems.
The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn. It's like a chick-flick on paper, except that I didn't find the protagonist's "dilemmas" terribly compelling. It did, however, make me want to have a socially responsible job.
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt is, by now, famous for drawing connections and making comparisons between unlikely events or situations: the most famous of these is probably his conclusion that legalized abortion reduced crime in the U.S. The book is perfectly approachable and interesting because it is full of such improbable-sounding connections. However, as Levitt points out, correlation and causality are distinct. He discusses real-life situations exclusively, and in such cases, there is no way to control all the variables, so I was left entertained, but somewhat dubious about his conclusions.
Also, I think I forgot to mention The Glass Harmonica by Louise Marley last time. I picked this up at a used bookstore while waiting to meet someone, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The story centers around two glass harmonica players, one in the past --a fictional character who helped Ben Franklin create and test his "armonica" -- and one in the future. The stories themselves are both interesting, although I liked the future setting better, and I didn't sort out the connection between then (which, to the author's credit, is never stated explicitly) until quite late in the book.