For those who are new ... we discuss books. I list what I'm reading, and people comment with what they're reading. Sometimes, on Sundays, I post a special edition on a particular genre or topic.
If you like to trade books, try bookmooch
I've written some book reviews on Yahoo Voices:
Book reviews on Yahoo
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule
DAY |
TIME (EST/EDT) |
Series Name |
Editor(s) |
SUN |
6:00 PM |
Young Reader's Pavilion |
The Book Bear |
SUN (hiatus) |
9:30 PM |
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club |
quarkstomper |
Bi-Monthly SUN |
Midnight |
Reading Ramblings |
don mikulecky |
MON |
8:00 PM |
Monday Murder Mystery |
Susan from 29 |
Mon |
11:00 PM |
My Favorite Books/Authors |
edrie, MichiganChet |
TUE |
10:00 PM |
Contemporary Fiction Views |
bookgirl |
WED |
7:30 AM |
WAYR? |
plf515 |
WED |
8:00 PM |
Bookflurries Bookchat |
cfk |
THU |
8:00 PM |
Write On! |
SensibleShoes |
alternate THU |
11:00 PM |
Audiobooks Club |
SoCaliana |
FRI |
8:00 AM |
Books That Changed My Life |
Diana in NoVa |
SAT (fourth each month) |
11:00 AM |
Windy City Bookworm |
Chitown Kev |
SAT |
9:00 PM |
Books So Bad They're Good |
Ellid |
Just finished
The Universal Computer: From Leibniz to Turing The history of the idea of the computer as a universal machine, and of the logic that makes it possible, up to the time of Turing. Fascinating. Re-affirms my belief that Leibniz is under-rated and that Godel was a very strange man. Full review
Another re-read of Cryptonomicon, one of my favorite novels. My review
Now reading
The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four remarkable friends who transformed science and changed the world by Laura Snyder. A group biography of Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell and Richard Jones, four friends who met at Cambridge early in the 19th century, and of how, together, they changed the role of science into something like what it is today.
A Behavioral Theory of Elections by Jonathan Bendor et al. Traditional "rational choice" models of voter behavior don't mesh all that well with how voters actually behave, in particular, they don't do well with predicting turnout. This is an attempt at a different formulation. This will interest election geeks.
Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution by Benson Bobrick. A good history of the revolutionary war period, hampered by a complete absence of maps.
Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France by Jean-Vincent Blanchard. If you thought politics is dirty now, read about what it was like in the days of Louis XIII. Very well done.
Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey by Peter Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus. A survey of the history of science from Copernicus to now.
Just started .
Soverign by C.J. Sansome. The third in the Matthew Shardlake series of mysteries set in Tudor England. This is the best yet (and the first two were good). Wonderfully done and deeply researched, Sansome gives a real flavor of what life was like in the time of Henry VIII. The storyline here is that Shardlake and his assistant have been sent to York, to ensure that a prisoner is well-treated so that he can be better-tortured when he returns to London. At the same time, Henry and his court are due on a "progress". Then someone is murdered.....
Empires of the Word: A language history of the world by Nicholas Ostler. Ostler traces the history of many of the "major" languages, where by "major" I mean "spoken by huge numbers of people". Fascinating. Linguistics is so interesting!