What are you reading?

[southernhybrid]

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.

 

[Politesse]

I also just lent Azimov's The Gods Themselves to someone without first wondering if the shine would be off it after 50 years.

Easily one of my favorite novels.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Just finished Juice.

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

Spoiler: Potentially

Pick an outcome, Winton.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

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

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Thanks for the tip. I'll be reading that, at some point.

 

[DBT]

'Ripples in a Cosmic Ocean' that manifest as matter/energy objects, stars, galaxies, life on earth, etc?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

'Ripples in a Cosmic Ocean' that manifest as matter/energy objects, stars, galaxies, life on earth, etc?

Yup, the author is heavily influenced by Carl Sagan.

 

[Swammerdami]

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.)