Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I really don't get what people see in this guy, I've read a number of his stories and usually just end the story and shake my head. I've tried numerous times to read his stuff and it always ends this way.

No problem. I feel the same way about different authors that others rave about.

Must be how our brain are wired, or our ages, experiences, etc.

[kennyc]

Guess so.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

No problem. I feel the same way about different authors that others rave about.

Must be how our brain are wired, or our ages, experiences, etc.

Exactly!

[BearMountainBooks]

Rats. I just downloaded Mike Carey's "The Devil You Know." Was pretty excited as it was only 2 bucks on Amazon. ARGH. I've already read the book!

What a dork.

[kennyc]

I just got the ebook from my library "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot


From Amazon:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley


http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-.../dp/1400052173

[SeaBookGuy]

I'm about a quarter of the way through Passing for Normal by Amy Wilensky, story of her life with
Tourette's Syndrome, great read so far!

(Downloaded library book)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Bikeridr

I'm now just past halfway through Stephen Hawking's "The Theory of Everything". Not sure which one to read next. I still have two more Hawking books bought and loaded into my Kindle (plus one pbook). Although I may have to read something lighter inbetween. Perhaps a Jeremy Clarkson or two coming up next.

I've got that one in my To-Be-Read folder, but there are several ahead of it. Right now I'm reading What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) edited by Paul Ekman and Erika L. Rosenberg. At $46.36, it's the most expensive ebook I've ever bought. It's very technical, extremely dry, and consists of scientific papers detailing experiments into how emotions register as facial expressions, and quite frankly not at all what I was hoping for, but since I paid $46.36, I'm going to finish it if it kills me.

The other scientific book I'm currently reading is The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing compiled and edited by Richard Dawkins. This is much more enjoyable and contains essays and excerpts from people such as J.B.S. Haldrane, Fred Hoyle, Stephen Pinker, E.O. Wilson, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Leakey, Stephen Jay Gould, Julian Huxley, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Erwin Schrödinger, Daniel Dennett, Martin Gardner, Alan Turing, Paul Davies, Brian Green, Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, David Deutsch, and many others. The bad news is that this one isn't availiable as an ebook. I've hit the "Tell the Publisher" button on the Amazon page. Maybe if 10,000 other people do the same, Oxford Press will get the message.

Another book ahead of the latest from Hawking is The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. Hopefully this will contain examples of the kind I had hoped to find in What the Face Reveals.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I just got the ebook from my library "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot ]

Finished this one a couple of weeks ago.

An interesting look on how little control you have over "stuff" removed from your body.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

...
The other scientific book I'm currently reading is The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing compiled and edited by Richard Dawkins. This is much more enjoyable and contains essays and excerpts ...
...

Hey I've got that sitting by my reading chair and pick it up and read a chapter every now and again.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

...

Another book ahead of the latest from Hawking is The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. Hopefully this will contain examples of the kind I had hoped to find in What the Face Reveals.

Hopefully it will help you figure out Norton.

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Finished this one a couple of weeks ago.
An interesting look on how little control you have over "stuff" removed from your body.

I read this too and really enjoyed it. A tiny bit over-long, but a great story.

[MickeyC]

Just finished The Grand Design by Steven Hawkings. In it, he argues that M Theory (plus others) prove you didn't need a god to create the universe.

Next, Brad Thor Takedown

[Cyclops]

I was reading The Castle of Otranto when my reader died!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Cyclops

I was reading The Castle of Otranto when my reader died!

You think it was intentional?

[Cyclops]

Originally Posted by kennyc

You think it was intentional?

I think it was a corrrupted file from PG! Sorted now!