The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society - Frans de Waal

i'm a bit torn over this one

there are a lot of really amazing animal anecdotes on why natural selection should favor empathy and cooperation

but

i don't agree with the assumption that the default human society position is individualism - especially when it's argued using a blockbuster movie from 1987 as an example of proof

a small gripe - overall good read

the universal deceleration of "rights" human animal and alien....for all we know we could be the aliens...

Kayak Morning - Reflections on love, grief, and small boats

Roger Rosenblatt

"A Princess of Mars" (1917) Edgar Rice Burroughs

It is the 1st book in his Barsoom series and the movie "John Carter" was based on it. The book is very good the movie, not so much

got 2 books in the backpack right now: a biography about malcolm x and "the courage to be yourself"

Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss

by

Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme


This is a memoir by two adult brothers whose parents both die within a short timeframe, and the brothers become compulsive gamblers and within a matter of a few years lose their fairly sizable inheritance (and gain debt) at the casinos. They are both smart, reflective English professors, and the quality of the writing as well as the way in which they try to figure out psychologically how they let this happen are both very impressive. I definitely recommend this book. It covers grief, our parents' hold on us even as adults and after their deaths, the complicated aspects of sibling relationships, and addiction all with such care.

I was not sure I'd like this book because I don't gamble and felt I might get bored, but instead I'm mesmerized. Big thumbs up!

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch

The book is about the year she spent reading a book a day. I just finished it. I hope it will inspire me to spend less time watching TV and playing Farmville and more time reading.

Which reminds me, I must go check on my crops.

The hunger games book 2

The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly.

I loved the Harry Bosch books. These -- the other is The Lincoln Lawyer -- not as much, but they are well done.

This book was written by Diego Rivera's daughter Lupe
if your a frida fan , this book is a very interesting insight from her step children, beautiful photos, alot I have not seen before.
http://www.american-buddha.com/afrid...l1x_small1.jpg

Reading "The Passage" right now (I think that's the name?? lol)... don't know who the author is - and I didn't read the summary so it's been a very interesting experience.

I am 90% certain the military is developing "vampires" for lack of a better word.. and I'm also fairly certain it's going to go horribly... There are bits that remind me a lot of "It" (by King of course)... and I think the vampires may be telepathic... lol

I'm liking this whole not reading the summary. Makes the book much more interesting. lol


(Book was recommended by a few celebrity geeks. The wife listens to pod casts - so she bought it, and I downloaded it onto my kindle and just started reading it telling her not to tell me what it's about)

about 15% in now... the author is spinning a very intriguing web... that's for sure.

I'm just starting Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds by Frank Joseph.

Seems like it's gonna be quite interesting. :)

Haunted

Chuck Palahniuk

parable of the talents by octavia butler

A Mercy - Toni Morrison

I love Octavia Butler, she's one of my inspirations to write. This is one of her best!

Started new book today
 

Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo

Articles, walkthroughs, blogs at www.msdn.com which provide hashing algorithms pertaining to security in oracle connection strings ... am coding in Visual C# 2010.

Wish I had brought another book home with me when I left work Tuesday. Just as well, I am supposed to be on vacation leave until upcoming Tuesday.

About to start reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I've been on the library wait list for over two months... figured that's recommendation enough and finally downloaded it to my Kindle.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...bIxl4GvoOiVPDg

A billing guide and manual :blink:

Oh, wow, sounds really good. Hope you will give us a review when you finish!

One book about introverts that I loved is The Highly Sensitive Person: http://www.hsperson.com/ . It was like a revelation to me, as it seems to have been for many others, because it's become a bit of a movement over the years. I even went to one of the author's workshops.

Why presidents should not hunt vampires:
 

Thanks, Kim! There was so little pressure that I forgot to post! :) Okay, my considered opinion of the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: it sucked. Bad pun aside, it really was dreadful. Form, content, style, I loathed it all.

I'll try to write this with as few spoilers as possible, but it's going to be tough. There are some glaring inconsistencies that I'm just aching to sink my teeth into. (oops, sorry.)

Let's start with the obvious: Does Abraham Lincoln make a believable vampire hunter? Well, maybe. He's got all the qualifications for a Dark Knight kind of super hero: tragedy and loss at an early age, a super-human strength or talent (axes, of course!), an obsession with revenge/justice, and oh, let's not forget the constant brooding. He's a tortured soul, our Abe.

His motivations as a vampire hunter are clear enough once you realize just how much the pesky vampires screwed up his childhood (and continue to screw up his adulthood). What's less clear is the motivation of Henry, the "good" vampire who teaches Abe how to hunt vampires and which ones to kill. For someone otherwise known as a brave and forward thinker, Abe comes off as a tool for a good part of the book as he races off to do Henry's bidding.

The author comes off as a tool as well, since the book's premise is that the author was commanded by Henry himself to write it. But why would Henry want to share the Great American Vampire Secret with the world? And why now? And with this author? I know it must sound like a trifling point... I mean, if I'm going to buy off on vampires and the presidents who kill them, why can't I look past Good Vampire Henry inserting himself into the present-day narrative via the author's life? It seemed to promise a shocking plot twist, but no, it was just a vehicle to get us to the book's true purpose: To make history cool for high schoolers who hate history.

Passages from Lincoln's secret vampire diaries are liberally dispersed throughout the text, along with quotes and passages from his more famous speeches and writings. The author tries to match Lincoln's cadence with the vocabulary of that time period, but at times it comes off clunky and hokey. I tend to feel a few steps removed when reading present-day diary-based narratives. Add another few steps back for the 150-year-old language, and another step back for constantly thinking "what makes the author think he can write a pretend-diary of one of the greatest orators in American history??"

I'm really not a history purist- if you can have fun with history, I'm all for it. But the author failed to make it come alive for me, and it had very little to do with all the Undead.

Reading Angelica by Sharon Shinn and liking it.

Listening to A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin on audible. i like the HBO series A Game of Thrones, but this book is putting me to sleep. People are always telling one another off or threatening each other. Or carrying out their threats. Kinda dull. I guess the series is the same, but it's visually interesting, and the actors are good.

Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger

lilith's brood by octavia butler. i'm glad i finally made it all the way through parable of the talents...parable of the sower & parable of the talents are my favorite octavia butler books, and they've changed my life so much.

i forgot - someone mentioned previously that they wanted to know what i thought of fifty shades of grey. i actually haven't made it that far through because it's so terrible, hehe. i pick it up every now and then when i am bored or needing amusement. eventually i'll make it through all the books, just because...i find it humorous that people find things like this entertaining, i guess.

on the serious side, though, it worries me that so many people are really into it because the book, imho, is not a good portrayal of bdsm at all...i mean, i know it's supposed to be fiction and romance and of course it's not like real life, but it's as though she got her ideas about bdsm from a website (the contract looks almost ripped from many websites i have seen) and doesn't know anything about bdsm in real life. which...yes, it's fiction, but dammit, it still gets on my nerves :P it frustrates me for the same reason twilight frustrates me (ironic, considering it was originally a twilight fanfiction) - that is...yes, it's fiction and it's not real and it's romanticized. but yet SO MANY women i have seen are idealizing it as the perfect relationship. that really disturbs me. a lot. maybe it gets better later in the books...i guess i'll find out.

headhunters - jo nesbø

a decent commuter read
starts out very intriguing but requires some suspension of disbelief to resolve itself

I just finished Gillian Flynn's Girl Gone. Save your time and money!

I'm now starting a book called Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

:)
 

Sadly, I havent been very excited about starting any new books in a long while...other than the Judy Blume one....however...today Teddy surprised me with a visit to my fave used bookstore and i found a gem....
A Country Year: Living the Questionsby Sue Hubbell. its about a woman in her 50s who spends an entire year living alone in the Ozarks. It reminds me of another book I loved, A Year in the Maine Woods by Bernd Heinrich

I read a tiny little book called Fup this morning. By Jim Dodge. Set in rural Northern CA, where I am. It apparently is widely loved, but I wasn't crazy about it. It was sort of an adult Old Yeller with a surprise magical realism ending. This is the second book published by Heyday Books that I have read. I didn't love either of them. :(