pepper131~ reading is good and I wish more people I know would pick up something, so we could have interesting discussions, vs. gossip or endless venting sessions,lol.
I never understood the appeal of tabloids, except I do have a fondness for Batboy..he always has something going on:-!

Loved Devil in the White City. Oddly disturbing but a great read.

okay, jetset...I'll admit to flipping through my latest Domino magazine at the beach too.

Sounds like I should read Devil in the White City. It's sitting on my husband's dresser afterall.

But...I have trouble getting through a Vanity Fair - lots of reading, good reading; but those dang two kids I've got...!!!!

pepper131~ I love Vanity Fair. What is Domino though?.. it can't be a pizza digest can it,lol.

I liked Freakonomics ... which made me think of Blink and The Tipping Point both my Malcolm Gladwell. I liked Tipping Point better, about how trends start but you might prefer Blink which explores how people are able to make instant decisions and be right without being sure why they decided that way. It starts out with an ancient statue a museum wished to buy. It had been authenticated but someone "instinctively" knew it was fake.

I am currently reading Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential"...enjoying it so far...

Betsy-- I Love Bill Bryson! I just finished reading "The Lost Continent" but "Sunburnt Country is still tied for my fave of all of his books (the other is "Notes From a Small Island). I have read all of his travel books at this point.He is the funniest/crankiest guy in the world.

Reading Robert Baer's book upon which "Syriana" is based as well as rereading "A Separate Peace" in order to "discuss" with my 14 y. o. daughter (summer homework).

Just finished "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and have Edith Wharton's "Summer" and "The Bee Season" on deck. I am trying to alternate "light" and "heavy" reading this summer. I have McCulloch's "John Adams" waiting in the wings as well.

Loved The Devil in the White City, too, and was far more fascinated by the devil!

Currently reading Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt.

jetset - Domino is my fluff...it's a Lucky magazine for your home. I HAVE to see how everyone is decorating these days....

dfrost - I'll have to chech out The Tipping Point and Blink...I'm facinated by things like that. Also on my shelf (untouched for a couple of yrs) is The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets by Ryan Matthews and Watts Wacker.

My DH has all the Bill Bryson books - guess he has good taste afterall...;)

I just finished <i>No god but God</i> by Reza Aslan, which was informative but dense. I'm one of the many currently reading <i>Freakanomics</i>. I love Bill Bryson, too. My favorites are <i>A Walk in the Woods</i> and <i>In a Sunburned Country</i>, but <i>Lost Continent</i> was great because he basically declares the Midwest to be the best part of the country. Reading <i>Nickel and Dimed</i> on vacation recently made me want to overtip like crazy.

Have you read &quot;Their Eyes Were Watching God&quot;? My sister (who takes classes in &quot;womens' studies&quot;) got it for me. I resisted for a while, but I really loved it.

Here's a suggestion for anyone who is looking for a good book to read: Go to the web site of any high school with high academic standards and look at their summer reading lists for the pre-AP and AP English classes. The teachers are quite up to date and, besides the &quot;classics&quot;, list the best of the recent books.

In no particular order-James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere; Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation; William Manchester's The Last Lion; Kenneth Jackson's Crabgrass Frontier; Donald Spoto's The Dark Side of Genius (bio of A. Hitchcock); Patrick Buchanan's The Death of the West; Michael Shelden's Orwell; Carlos Baker's Hemingway; and John Mack Faragher's Daniel Boone. For fiction, Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, preferably in order.

I was going to add Vanity Fair (still makes me laugh when the bible comes flying out of the carriage), but someone beat me to it!

Well, what a nice way to start the morning..and to the naysayers(though they are being kind at this point), the aforementioned books do travel well.
I usually notice what people are reading and buying in the airport bookstores.
Thanks for all the great reads.. I noticed a few I've been meaning to buy and I'm a library supporter as well.

P.S. Has Stephen Hawking released anything new this year? J.

just finished eat pray love a few weeks ago. Good quick read but not a deep as I had thought it would be.

Great thread! I can't seem to leave it alone.
I enjoyed the Tipping Point and I started noticing things in my own life that related. Haven't read Blink yet.

A couple of months ago I read Under the Banner of Heaven. Whew! It was hard to believe that's going on here in the good old U.S of A. Seems like a great book for a book club, at least, I wanted to discuss it endlessly.

I also wanted to add Carolyn Myss' Invisable Acts of Kindness to this list. It was one of those books that can make you leak with joy.

I just finished Before The Wind an autobiography of early 19th century sea captain Charles Tyng. It was wonderfully written even for today's standards, and I learned a lot about the world of that era, the captain, and expanded my ever-growing base of nautical knowledge.

yeees, missypie- HS was my first unfortunate encounter with the russian novelists:)

I used that tactic a few times my Freshman year of college....and then gave up in disgust when a few to many listed HP (and other popular reads)....talk about the frightening future of education, LOL

hmmmm- and I enjoy a good political commentary/social issues humor....not exactly cerebral, but not beach reading either:)

Here's our high school's list for the 11th graders:

1. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

2. You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe

3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

4. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

5. A Death in the Family by James Agee

6. Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

7. A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines

Not bad (and not Harry Potter!)

Here's the list for the incoming G/T 9th graders:

1. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997, 1999.

2. Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America. Owl Books, 2001.

3. Kunstler, James Howard. Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. Simon and Schuster, June 1993.

4. Friedman, Thomas. Longitudes and Attitudes. Anchor, August 2003.

5. Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Anchor, April 2000.

6. Lapierre, Dominique. City of Joy. Doubleday, October 1985.

7. Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. HarperCollins, 2002.

8. Herzog, Brad. States of Mind. John F. Blair Pub., 2000.

9. Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. W. W. Norton, 2003.

10. Foner, Eric. Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World. Hill and Wang, 2003.

Yikes, what a list.

My Dad picked up a copy of You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe at a library sale and found it difficult. Though now retired, he has an excellent education and does read 'difficult' novels and nonfiction. When he said it was hard, I decided against it. If someone with an extensive education, maturity of living a long life, plus a history of the time period and place has difficulty, how would a high school student rank it?


Nickel &amp; Dimed was summer reading for incoming freshmen at UNC a few years ago.