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What are you reading?

 
 
 
Do I have to list every book I'm reading? Let me share a few for starters.

Dog Sense. by John Bradshaw.

Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz

The two books about go into detail about how dogs think, their emotions, their body parts etc. Reading about dogs and other animals are my favorites.

2000 Years of Disbelief. ( this is a great one and since all of these books are on my kindle, it's hard to read the author's name on some of them )

Are we Smart Enough to know how Smart Animals are by Frans de Waal. ( I don't think we are )

Mama's Last Hug by Frans de Waal ( Another good book about the relationship we have with other animals, especially other primates )

Conscience the Origins of Moral Intuition by Patricia S Chruchland. ( I need to get back to this one as I started it awhile ago and don't recall much of it )

From Fappers to Rappers This one is a fun book about slang that I read a bit from time to time

There are several more than I'm trying to read but sometimes forget about because I have a tendency to read too many books at once, almost always nonfiction as fiction bores me at this point in my life.

I've already suggested Doctor Dogs, How are best friends may become our best medicine by Maria Goodavage. ( That is my favorite book of the year , so far

Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson is my second favorite of the year. I just finished it about a week ago.
 
Just finished Juice.

Well worth the read. Right up to the final paragraph.

Pick an outcome, Winton.
 
Ripples On the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System

The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters
 
DBT said:
'Ripples in a Cosmic Ocean' that manifest as matter/energy objects, stars, galaxies, life on earth, etc?
Click to expand...
Yup, the author is heavily influenced by Carl Sagan.
 
My son decided to buy stocks, picking Nvidia et al (even though he hates the notion of AI even more than I). I gave him my old copy of the famous 19th century book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, suggesting he read the chapter on "Tulipomania." (When he returned the book I reread that chapter myself and found it useless and interesting :-( )

Anyway, for my birthday he gave me the much better 2022 book Conspiracy by Phillips & Elledge. The cover blurbs say "Witty ... Utterly brilliant ... Very funny" and many of the footnotes are very witty, but it is a serious and interesting discussion of conspiracy theories over the centuries. I'll give just three examples:

Alfred Wallace (co-inventor of Darwin's Evolution) took up a crackpot's offer to gamble on whether the Flat Earth hypothesis could be disproved! Wallace eventually won the bet, but only after wasting much time and money on lawyers, etc.

Europe's Dark Ages were even darker than you thought. According to the Phantom Time Hypothesis, 297 fake years were added to the calendar some time after the fall of Rome. Charlemagne et al never existed: they "lived" during the time period that never existed at all.

A more recent hypothesis is that there is no Finland: If you meet someone claiming to be a Finn, they're just play-acting. Finland was invented by Russia and Japan to improve their fishing rights in the Baltic. Australia also doesn't exist: Among several proofs of this, why do airplanes allegedly traveling from Australia to South America or South Africa not fly over Antarctica? (Of course Flat Earthers have a different explanation for that conundrum: Antarctica is an impenetrable wall of ice, beyond which is ... Nothing.)
 
I am rereading Julian May's 8 book Many Coloured Land/Milieu series.

It is an addictive joy. I'm in book 5 and pretending I can't see the stack of library books that need to be read and returned, or the ones friends have loaned me and want to see again someday.

On the first read you ignore some aspects as trivial colour. Only on subsequent reads is it clear that she had the whole epic clear in her mind from day one.

It's worth a read of her Wiki page to have some idea of the depth and breadth of her writing, which possibly explains the basis - if not of her knowledge - of the research skill required to form this densely packed tale.

This and the Aubrey/Maturin series are going with me into the nursing home.
 
I am reading Paul, A Very Short Introduction, by E.P. Sanders. I thought I would like to know what can be known concretely about Paul from a historical point of view.

First of all, it’s not all that short.

Second, the basic known facts of Paul’s life are actually very few.

So how come this book seems so interminable? Because Sanders takes the approach that, since the actual facts are so few, we can enter Paul’s mind and character by examining (in detail) the various twists and turns of Paul’s (tortured) theology.

Sanders points out that to a religious person, especially one in ancient times, you start with the conclusion and work backwards to determine causes.

So that’s what Sanders does.

All the twists and turns, contradictions, and confusion of Paul’s thought serves to justify, in Paul’s mind, his mission to the Gentiles.

The book is, as I said, interminable. However I am determined to finish it nevertheless. If I disappear for more than a few more days, send out a posse for me.
 
Finished a biography of Queen Mary I of England; am now reading a biography of Karen carpenter.

Rob
 
Read Dark Matter, James Kinross. Really.

It's about the microbiome but because all things are connected, which is coincidentally one of the points the author is making, it is chock full of stuff I never knew about seemingly unrelated issues.

I rarely buy books these days, I'm trying to give away most of what I have, but I might need my own copy of this one.
 
As usual, I'm reading too many books at the same time, but the two I started the most recently are:

Mayo Clinic Guide to Osteoporosis and Dementia, Awareness A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding the
Disease
 
spikepipsqueak said:
Read Dark Matter, James Kinross. Really.

It's about the microbiome but because all things are connected, which is coincidentally one of the points the author is making, it is chock full of stuff I never knew about seemingly unrelated issues.

I rarely buy books these days, I'm trying to give away most of what I have, but I might need my own copy of this one.
Click to expand...
I gave away most of my books because I only read on my kindle now. I get so many free or nearly free books with my amazon digital dollars that I doubt I'll live long enough to finish reading them all.

I just started reading Peterson Bird Behavior. Yesterday I read a book of poetry written by dogs to the residents of the ALF where I volunteer called, "I Could Chew on This". They love silly books like that.
 
southernhybrid said:
spikepipsqueak said:
Read Dark Matter, James Kinross. Really.

It's about the microbiome but because all things are connected, which is coincidentally one of the points the author is making, it is chock full of stuff I never knew about seemingly unrelated issues.

I rarely buy books these days, I'm trying to give away most of what I have, but I might need my own copy of this one.
Click to expand...
I gave away most of my books because I only read on my kindle now. I get so many free or nearly free books with my amazon digital dollars that I doubt I'll live long enough to finish reading them all.

I just started reading Peterson Bird Behavior. Yesterday I read a book of poetry written by dogs to the residents of the ALF where I volunteer called, "I Could Chew on This". They love silly books like that.
Click to expand...
Poetry written by dogs? Can you give a sample?


Maybe something like,

"When the bough-ow-ow breaks
The cradle will fall..."

Or


"Raff a reague, raff a reague,
Raff a reague onrard,
Rall in the ralley of reath,
Rode the Rix-Rundred..."
 
WAB said:
southernhybrid said:
spikepipsqueak said:
Read Dark Matter, James Kinross. Really.

It's about the microbiome but because all things are connected, which is coincidentally one of the points the author is making, it is chock full of stuff I never knew about seemingly unrelated issues.

I rarely buy books these days, I'm trying to give away most of what I have, but I might need my own copy of this one.
Click to expand...
I gave away most of my books because I only read on my kindle now. I get so many free or nearly free books with my amazon digital dollars that I doubt I'll live long enough to finish reading them all.

I just started reading Peterson Bird Behavior. Yesterday I read a book of poetry written by dogs to the residents of the ALF where I volunteer called, "I Could Chew on This". They love silly books like that.
Click to expand...
Poetry written by dogs? Can you give a sample?


Maybe something like,

"When the bough-ow-ow breaks
The cradle will fall..."

Or


"Raff a reague, raff a reague,
Raff a reague onrard,
Rall in the ralley of reath,
Rode the Rix-Rundred..."
Click to expand...
An example is below

The Best Day

Today is the best day
Today is the greatest day
Today is the most amazing
Fantastic
Utterly incredible
day
Ever
Because it's Saturday
Wait. It's
Tuesday?
Well that's great
too.

Some of much better but that's the one my damn kindle opened up to.

I also have a book of cat poetry.
 
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