I just finished John McPhee's latest: Uncommon Carriers. It's a McPhee go-there-and-explore look at the business of commercial transportation, and a slice of the lives of the people who make their livings at it: owner-operators of eighteen-wheelers, river towboats (which actually are push boats) -- you know, navigation gets interesting when the river is narrower than your barge string is long -- a digression into a canoe trip replicating more or less the trip Thoreau and his older brother (who died young of septicemia) took; a coal train out of Wyoming taking low-sulfur coal to Georgia. As is usual with McPhee when he writes about this kind of thing, you get a lot of I-never-knew-that tidbits.

This may not be the titanic work Annals of the Former World was -- anyone who enjoys geology should read that -- but it upholds McPhee's reputation.

I thought we'd agreed that Hiassen is insane.

A Bried History of Nearly Everything

Lucy Gault - Wm. Trevor

Evolution vs. Creationism - Eugenie Scott

Sick puppy.


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xob -you're right about the doorknobs. Goldfinger has the most excruciating game of golf. I'm at the skimming point now, this may well be my last Bond. (Who am I kidding, I'm seriously short of alternatives in the mindless fiction category..... :rolleyes: )

Anyone read "Next" by Michael Crichton?
I'm just starting and it's.. interesting.

I got it for my birthday back in November. It's next in line in the to-read pile, which means I might get started on it, oh, by July if I'm lucky. I miss having time to read.

"Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" by Koren Zailckas.

This relatively young woman writes her memoir about her relationship with alchohol, starting with her first drink in high school and culminating in her alcohol-ridden college experience. She uses facts about women and drinking and her own experiences. She writes in a wonderfully honest voice. I think young women should read this book.

A very good book about a very good group of dedicated individuals.

Ah--thanks.

Just finished The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell, by Loraine Despres. A "Southern romance novel," I figured it would be sappy fluff, so I put off reading it until I needed help falling asleep one night. But it turned out to be really interesting. The story's set in 1920, so the author took advantage of the time period, and wove a few well-researched issues of the day into the plot--women's suffrage, eugenics, spread of the Klan and the automobile, etc.

I'm reading Lord Foul's Bane. Finally.
I've seen it around for years but until reading about it here I wasn't fussed about reading it.

I have to admit I'm mildly disappointed so far.
It just doesn't have a lot of substance to it.
I should have read it years ago.

That's a sequel right? Did you read the one(s) leading up to it? Thomas Covenant, right?

I'm just starting Bel Canto.

I'm pretty sure I'm reading the first one
The character is introduced before he travels to the other world - it starts with him going to pay a telephone bill...

My bad. It's been 20 years or so since I read it.

Don't worry - I know what that's like
I actually bought a book from the charity shop the other day and got 3/4 of the way through before I realised I'd read it. In my defense it was really generic chick-lit though.

Andy McNab: Recoil

TheMercenary- yeah, it's sad to see the sticks thrown in the wheels of guys actually trying to make a difference...Wonder where the world would be now if they had been able to operate like it was 1975.

Completely nuts, which is why you should read Skin Tight.