(December 18, 2014 at 5:21 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: "The Changing World of Mormonism" is a fascinating look at just how TOTALLY fucked up old Joseph Smith's church started out and STAYED for almost 200 years.
Added it to my amazon wishlist. I'm up to 521 items now.
(January 11, 2015 at 5:48 am)Alex K Wrote: This is nonfic, or even meta-fic, but I got Pinker's "A Sense of Style" for Christmas, and I can't shut up about it. I really share his passion for what he calls classic style.
Oops, make that 522...
(February 10, 2015 at 4:15 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Far better than any of the adaptations on film. Jane Bennet is better in the book than in any of the films, which always change her to be less intelligent and less pretty, evidently to ensure that the viewer will prefer Elizabeth Bennet. The book starts with a very famous and memorable first sentence. A delight to read. Austen is a keen observer of human nature.
I love Pride and Prejudice. I'm still annoyed that I loaned to an ex (he wasn't an ex at the time) and his dog chewed it up. Not joking.
It's been a long time since I've read Persuasion, but I'm in a non-fiction kick right now.
(February 10, 2015 at 6:09 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: Collapse, by Jared Diamond is probably the best book I've ever read. Jared Diamond is a genius in a way that very few people are.
That's in my purchased-book queue but was pushed back because I wanted to read The Demon Haunted World again...
My book I can't shut up about lately is
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henr...etta+lacks
It tells the life story of the black woman whose cancer cells were biopsied in the 1950s, and then unethically, and unbeknownst to her and her family, given to a tissue culturist and went on to be the first human cells ever successfully cultured in a lab. HeLa, as her cells are called, became the basis for the polio vaccine, the HPV vaccine, and, for a long time, the only human cells on which doctors could perform medical research.
It talks a lot about the life of Henrietta, her family (particularly her daughter), the state and future of medical ethics and tissue research, as well as gives a background on how poor, black people were treated by doctors at Johns Hopkins during the era of segregation: because they often didn't have the money to pay for treatments, the doctors basically felt that they "owed" the hospital in some way and their payment for treatment would be that the doctors could take samples without asking and, in some cases, perform medical tests without getting consent (in one instance, a doctor injected HeLa cells into patients' forearms, effectively giving them cancer without telling them what he was doing or informing them of the danger he was placing them in).
It's a great conversation-starting book! I told my mom she had to read it
It's also only $1.99 on amazon
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
