What are you reading?

[BurtWorm]

Me: an advance copy of Government Girl, by Stacy Parker Aab, which is due out in January. She was an intern in the Clinton administration when Monica Lewinsky was. The book is mostly a memoir of her time at the White House, and that enables her to meditate on sex and gender at the apex of political power. That's when it's most lively. I'm guessing it won't be a best-seller, but she writes well and it's an interesting read.

I just finished another advance copy of a book by Shankar Vedantam, a Washington Post science reporter, called The Hidden Mind (also due out in January). This is a book you should watch for. It concerns the powerful biases of the unconscious mind, which we all have running on autopilot under the tiny weakling of a conscious mind that, by definition, we pay most attention to. Vedantam argues persuasively that the unconscious mind actually makes a lot of decisions for us--such as whom to hire, elect or associate with based on race, gender, and other prejudicial categories. Interestingly, Vedantam says there's a strong correlation between unconscious bias and conservative belief, and he has the data to prove it.

Finally, I'm deep into Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm, his precursor to Nixonland. It's a horrifyingly fascinating account of how extreme right-wing politics wormed its way to the "center" in post-WWII America. Highly recommended.

What are you reading?

[VMI Dem]

1. A Dance with Dragons.

Oh wait. Not.

[Chan790]

14. Think anybody will actually ever read it?

I'm starting to fear it'll be a coffin novel...something that we all get as an unfinished work after Martin's demise put-out or cobbled together by his estate...worse, something finished by someone else; those never turn out well.

[seemunkee]

2. The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq

by Rory Stewart
About member of the young British foreign service trying run a region of Iraq after the invasion.

[unpossibles]

3. "The Bicycle Diaries" by David Byrne

It's great. Actually, I just finished it.

It's basically his ruminations of biking in various cities around the world and at home, as well as some great thoughts on how cities happen, what makes some neighborhoods succeed, city planning, art & the creative process, and a bit on other subjects.

[BurtWorm]

4. I read his blog.

He's an interesting guy. You learn from reading him.

:thumbsup:

[Tobin S.]

5. The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan

[unpossibles]

6. That is one of my all time favorite books.

Sagan is amazing, or was rather.

[Heidi]

7. Re-reading "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga," a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography

of Jackson Pollock. It's beautiful written and I recommend it highly to anyone willing to challenge his/her own preconceptions about Pollock and his work. Beware, though: I found it a very sad read in many respects. Still worth reading, though.

[Call Me Wesley]

8. Old stuff ...

Kurt Vonnegut, Arno Schmidt (German,) Gottfried Benn (German,) Jack Kerouac, James Joyce, William S. Burroughs, J. D. Salinger, Steinbeck, Hemingway.

[Chan790]

9. I just finished "A Canticle for Liebowitz"

which was interesting in so far as only a Catholic apologetic text on the conflict between faith and reason's valuation of the purpose and end-result of knowledge could be.

[hamsterjill]

11. Required Reading in my college history class.

As much as I remember of it - it was well worth the time.

[Forkboy]

10. Memorial Day by Vince Flynn.

[Fire Walk With Me]

12. Just finished this morning the two stories I hadn't read in Phillip K. Dick, Four Stories of the 60s

[seemunkee]

13. dupe