Inspiration fail

[james_davis_nicoll]

Are there any books (non-fiction or fiction) I should put on my birthday list?

Comments

[wild_irises]

Although it is by its nature U.S.-centric, I thought Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, a historical treatment of the "great migration" of American blacks from the South to the North of the U.S. during most of the 20th century, was an extraordinarily brilliant book, in large part because of Wilkerson's extraordinary weaving of the anecdotal and the factual aspects of history--I think you'd like that if the subject interests you at all.

[thejeopardymaze]

Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible by John H. Walton

Not enough Canaanite myth examined in there, but really interesting.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Non-fiction: my own birthday haul included 1493, In The Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent, and The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum, all of which are fun so far.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

1493! I knew I was forgetting something!

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I very much liked 1493. It's on my Kindle.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read it, I second the suggestion of The Poisoner's Handbook. Very good history of a specific science.

[comrade-cat.livejournal.com]

What nonfic topics do you like reading about?

Urn Burial, by Sir Thomas Browne.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

I don't know the year of publication, but Sir Thomas Browne lived from 1605 to 1682. This is very early archeology, prior to the shared terminology and shared frameworks for investigation, and it is written in language that could so easily be direct quotes from a Shakespearean character.

I enjoyed very much watching Browne using imprecise tools to pursue his investigation in a methodical way. The language in the book is transitional, and so interesting.

Re: Urn Burial, by Sir Thomas Browne.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You might like Browne's Pseudoxia Epidemica, too-- it's an early Snopes.

Re: Urn Burial, by Sir Thomas Browne.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I will watch for it.

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

I'll throw in a vote for Brian Switek's Written in Stone for some fascinating stuff about fossils.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of "The Far Away Horses" by Buck Brannaman. As much as you rescue and rehabilitate cats, you might enjoy his take on working with problem horses. It's a very easy read, but he gives attention to what humans do that causes a horse to react, which I find interesting and intend to apply to dogs as I can.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

The mildly magically realistic Collected Works of TJ Spivet - a fictional cartographic prodigy. The book is massively illustrated and annotated (don't miss the copyright page!)
The protagonist is sweet and clever and tweenish and traumatized and Aspergery around the edges. I adored his "revenge" for unfair bad grades - even better than the secret society he encounters.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Note: my first impulse was to answer "yes!"

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I recommend Pistols! Treason! Murder! by Jonathan Walker. It's a serious but clever history of a particular seventeenth-century Venetian spymaster, mixed in with the historian explaining how he does history.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Here's a vote for "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years" by David Graeber. Currently being crawled all over by the academic folks blogging on Crooked Timber; it's polemical and partisan and provocative, of course, but it's also interesting and does not play well with the Received Wisdom of classical economics (or any of the dingbat schools, either). Graeber is (a) an anthropologist and (b) an anarchist (not a libertarian), and it shows.

[(Anonymous)]

I've only just started it, but for non-fiction "What disturbs our Blood" by James FitzGerald comes highly recommended. Overachievement, insanity, and secrets in the Upper Canadian upper middle class.

http://www.amazon.ca/What-Disturbs-Our-Blood-Redeem/dp/0679313168/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330297185&sr=1-1

And on the topic of blood, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine's "The blood Doctory". History, mystery (of a kind) science and politics, what's not to like?

William Hyde