When I was younger, I always read books sequentially, one book at a time, to be finished before I ever thought to start another. In short, I was a serially monogamous reader.
Times have changed. These days I’m quite a promiscuous reader, usually in the midst of three or four different books, with at least another half dozen sitting on the end table next to my chair, tempting me to jump into them as well.
What’s on that table this week?
- Chad Orzel’s How To Teach Physics To Your Dog, in which Orzel explains quantum physics through conversations with his German Shepard mix, Emmy. (She has her own Facebook page, too.) Actually, I finished this one last night. But as a dog person married to a physics guy, I couldn’t pass it up. (And now my own dog seems to be searching for bunnies made of cheese, too, even though we both now know better.)
- Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). This came out a couple of years ago; I only just got it a few months ago and am a few chapters in. Interesting stuff for anybody with a drivers license.
- Zbigniew Borysiuk’s Modern Saber Fencing and Bob Handelman and Connie Louie’s Fencing: A Practical Guide for Training Young Athletes. Partly pure interest and partly research—a non-fencer writing a mystery set at a fencing tournament needs a little verisimilitude.
- David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong. How could the alternative educator in me resist?
- Stanislas Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. Yet another title irresistible to an incorrigible book dork like me.
Hmm, looks like I’m about due for some fiction.
Mary Griffith 