What Am I Reading....

Since the Election, I have sharply reduced my TV watching. The box is mostly dark and silent, though I switched it on a couple of times since Nov.3 rd, so I saw a couple of good panels on C-span, a couple of movies on HBO, about 30 minutes of tsunami footage, and last night, the amazing pictures of the surface of Titan.

Likewise, instead of NPR all the time, there is now silence (or a nice CD) at home and an even mix of NPR, music stations and old tapes in the car. I almost completely stopped reading the newspapers, both hardcopy and online, and spend way less time on blogs and forums (and gradually gravitating more and more towards science blogs).

I am working on my Dissertation, catching up on scientific literature, and returning to BOOKS! I used to be a kind of reader who starts a book, reads it through until the last word, then picks up another. These days I am so scattered, I have a number of books in various stages of reading. Here they are:

Book I am currently enthralled with and reading at full speed:

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670033375/qid=1105835142/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0331478-1525604?v=glance&s=books

Here are some related articles and reviews:

Will We Ever Learn?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/play.html?pg=5?tw=wn_tophead_3

The Ends of the World as We Know Them
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010205Y.shtml (originally here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/opinion/01diamond.html)

Are we doomed?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/01/08/jared_diamond/


Books I started, then stalled...

Joe Trippi's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televized". Never being a Deaniac, I quickly skimmed through the first half of the book or so and concentrated on the last couple of chapter in which Joe extrapolates from specific to general and has thoughts about the future role of the Internet in politics. I am unlikely to go back and re-read the early chapters ever, so this book will remain forwever on an "not read" list, though I got out of it what I was looking for.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=dp_searchBox_1/002-0331478-1525604?url=index%3Dbooks%26dispatch%3Dsearch%26results-process%3Dbin&field-keywords=Joe+Trippi+Revolution&x=10&y=13

John McWorther's "Doing Our Own Thing: the degradation of language and music and why we should, like, care", started out really well, but will have to wait awhile until I get to it again, as there is so much other exiciting stuff to read....

Books I started and can't wait to continue...

Marjorie Kelly's Divine Right of the Capital

Cathleen Schine - "Rameaus's Niece". I loved her previous novel, "Evolution of Jane" and the beginning of this one is already gripping....

Clayton Christensen - "The Innovator's Dilemma". I am afraid it will be economics above my head later in the book, but I like the beginning and will forge through with focus and determination. Useful for understanding the Long Tail phenomenon and acting in a way that may pay off in the future.

Nicholas Davidoff - "The Fly Swatter". This has been waiting for two years for me to pick it up again but other things always somehow took precedence. I may have to start from the beginning, as I barely remember what was it all about....

Books I read in bits and pieces every now and then...

"Shock and Awe: The War on Words" is a collection of short pieces by a variety of authors, thus a perfect book to read one piece at the time.

"Men Writing Science Fiction As Women", and "Women Writing Science Fiction As Men", are two collections of stories edited by Mike Resnick and are just perfect reading when you have just 10 minutes in a waiting room, or are stuck in traffic....

Re-reading "Collected Stories" by Mark Twain is always a good thing whenever one's sense of humor needs re-tuning....

Books I Feel Obliged To Read....

Of course, those are new books and textbooks in my field. The first skims do not promise exceptional reads, so it is easy to postpone the inevitable. "Rhythms of Life" by Russell Foster, "Chronobiology" by Jay Dunlap, Jennifer Loros and Patricia DeCoursey, "The Mind at Night" by Andrea Rock, "The Promise of Sleep" by William Dement and "The Living Clock" by John Palmer are all waiting patiently for my attention....

I also feel obliged, as someone who writes about Red/Blue divide a lot, to read Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?". I'll get to it one day....

Books I Can't Wait To Start....

First, two new arrivals on my sci-fi shelf: "Ursus" and "Time for Sherlock Holmes" by David Dvorkin.

I just ordered "Biased Embryos and Evolution" by Wallace Arthur . Earlier Books by Wallace were always gems, kinds of books that make you think outside the box...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521541611/ref=olp_product_details/002-0331478-1525604?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

"The Scientist in the Crib" by Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl, comes to me with great recommendations from trusted people....

Three books by David Harvey, "The New Imperialism", "Justice, Nature & the Geography of Difference" and"The Condition of Postmodernity" also come highly recommended by trusted people...