What We've Been Reading  

Here's a few of the books lying around our house:

1. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Self-explanatory. What would the world be like without humans. Non-fiction from the library.

2. On Ugliness, by Umberto Eco. A compellingly thorough look through social opinions of ugliness, starting with the ancient Greeks. This one's going to take some time. Miss B. bought this for me on Amazon - it's normally like 45 bucks at Border's.

3. The Healthy Southwest Table. The library.

4. He Said Beer, She Said Wine, by Sam Calagione and Marnie Old. Sam's the head brewer at Dogfish Head in Delaware, Marnie is a serious wine critic. Both claim that their beverage is a better choice with your meals, and for good reasons. Got this one in an online contest for free.

5. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, by Roald Dahl. A favorite from my childhood. This edition was to be thrown out during our school library's spring cleaning, so we rescued it.

6. A book of Scottish folk tales, a book called "Black Fairy Tales", and two kids books about horses. Ditto.

7. The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White. Ditto.

8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the sequel Rodrick Rules. These are great books by Jeff Kinney; the idea is that he's keeping a diary as a sixth grader and then into seventh. Great for pretty much all ages (as long as they can read, obviously). Borrowed from a fifth grade teacher.

9. The Encyclopedia of Animals from DK Publishing. Got this one at Costco. My kids are going to love this one next year.

10. The book club at school just finished The Fifth Child by 2008 Nobel laureate Doris Lessing. Coming up is Persepolis, and then a Janet Evanovich.

11. Two holds at the library, try to guess which is for whom: The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan, and The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol Adams.