Ok for the high brow crowd what books you are reading

[big nasty kcnut]

I'm reading The New American Revolution by tammy bruce. She is a great thinker and funny.

[Hydrae]

Speaking of Crichton, one of my favorites of his is Timeline. I notice it was not mentioned in the earlier responses but I would highly recommend it. Again, book is much, much better than the movie they tried to make.

Currently I am just about done with a book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates. (http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Dougla...5479144&sr=1-1) It has been a very interesting read about a subject I knew very little about.

[phisherman]

Herman Hesse - The Glass Bead Game

i read steppenwolf and siddhartha in college lit classes, but man, i don't think that i gave this man his due when i read those classics.

i reread steppenwolf and picked up narcissus and goldmund a few months ago and i've been on a hesse kick ever since. something profound to me about man's struggle with self.

[blueballs]

The high brow on Pot planet
can read

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by NewPhin

Just picked up Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon after finishing Brave New World.

Finished this book, and I loved it. It's hard to describe, really. It's a tribute to detective noir set in an alternate Jewish state in Sitka, AK. Basically, imagine if instead of Israel, the Jews had been provided some land in Alaska as their refuge. Tons and tons of yiddish slang that's pretty hilarious, and this weird alternate reality allows Chabon to really flex his creative muscles. Good stuff.


Currently reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Planning on reading Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson next.

[cadmonkey]

I am currently reading "How To Make Love Like A Pornstar", the Jenna Jameson autobiography. Its actually pretty good.

[Frazod]

I'm nearly finished with The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. Like Kite Runner, it's not one I would have picked myself, but I got it as a birthday present. Basically this is the story of an obnoxious middle-aged guy from Iowa driving around the country in his mom's Chevette, offering commentary (generally unfavorable) on the places and people he encounters along the way. I've been to many of the places the author visits along the way, and he does frequently hit the nail on the head when he described places. Light reading, but not a bad book. It is about 20 years old, so I hope now Bill gets himself a GPS unit so he won't blame his inability to read maps on others.

[irishjayhawk]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

I picked up The Tippng Point and Blink about a month ago to have something to read at the airport, and finished The Tipping Point within a couple of flights.... very good, very fast read. I really liked how in-depth he got on some of the issues... who knew you could learn so much from the differences between Sesame Street and Blue's Clues. I liked the part on smoking, too; kids don't smoke to be cool, they smoke because they're already cool.

Haven't had much time for Blink, but I'm about halfway through it. I'm a HUGE information gatherer. I will do everything I can to gather facts, learn about a process, and explain what I've done and what I'm thinking about doing next; all before even asking someone else. Hell, when I couldn't find the book at Barnes and Noble, I was ready to tell the guy "Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote the Tipping Point... I couldn't find it in Psychology and it wasn't with the Tipping Point in Business........"; and about two words into my information dump the guy was like "StFU, follow me." So, some of the things he talks about have been pretty enlightening.

Also, I'm not huge on marketing and advertising... I think it's interesting in terms of technology (getting the right information to the right people), but it's a classic prisoner's dillemma (everyone would be better off if no one advertised, but once one company does, they all have to). I've had a couple of marketing classes, but I was pretty surprised when I read about not just the importance of packaging, but how it actually changes the outcome of taste tests.

You sound like me (info gatherer). Both those books are superb. I learned a lot from The Tipping Point, especially.

In fact, I'm reading Omnivore's Dilemma which, I've been told, has been discussed somewhere in this mammoth thread.

[Huffman83]

Originally Posted by cadmonkey

I am currently reading "How To Make Love Like A Pornstar", the Jenna Jameson autobiography. Its actually pretty good.

I actually read that a couple years back. While parts are interesting...it's like reading the life about someone who wants to be deep. But they're not.

So it can get pretty boring.

However it could be argued that Jameson only know how to take it deep.

And have the pictures/vids to prove it!

[teedubya]

I am reading "SEO Mindset" by Brad Callen

[smittysbar]

At the moment, the new issue of Golf Digest.

[Adept Havelock]

Just a heads-up I thought I would share with the fans of Gene Wolfe on the Planet. I know from past conversations there are a few of you fellow literary masochists out there.

Years ago, Michael Andrussi wrote the Lexicon Urthus, which was a dictionary/essay collection for many of the wonderful and extremely obscure words and ideas that populate his Urth cycle aka The Book of the New Sun. The Lexicon has been out of print since about 2002, and usually goes for around $150-$200 due to it's scarcity.

However, Andrussi has finished the Second Edition (just got the email today) which will be released on August 1st by Sirius Publishing. It's a print-on-demand book $20 Paperback and $40 Hardback.

http://www.siriusfiction.com/lexicon.html

Also, for those who are serious about teasing out the "hidden" parts of Wolfe's Magnum Opus, I'd also suggest the following books:

Solar Labyrinth and The Long and Short of it, collections of essays by Robert Borski.

Shadows of the New Sun by Peter Wright, another collection of essays by Wolfe and Wright.

The Castle of the Otter by Gene Wolfe, essays on the New Sun and writing in general.

Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader by Peter Wright.

[JuicesFlowing]

I envy anyone who has time to read. I miss it. I enjoy all of Milan Kundera's novels ... have read a lot of them more than once.

[teedubya]

I am now reading "Groundswell"

Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now.

When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.

[Frazod]

Time to bump the book thread.

I'm a sucker for any Band of Brothers stuff, and recently picked up Call of Duty, an autobiography by Buck Compton. It's pretty clear that Buck has some issues with the way he was portrayed in the miniseries, especially the whole combat fatigue thing (he's shown wigging out after his buddies get their legs blown off at Bastogne); he says he really was hurt, and implies he was removed from the company because of his outspoken criticism of Company CO Dike. He also hated Lewis Nixon's guts (Winters' buddy), which I found interesting. It seems pretty clear that these two things were his primary motivation for writing the book, the rest reads pretty much like an old man telling you his life story in middling detail. But it's an interesting life, and a good read.

[gblowfish]

"Fan Born Every Minute" by Carl Delano Peterson & Rufus Dawes