reading

In the queue:

2010

  1. The Lost City of Z
  2. Conquest of the Useless
  3. Korea

2009:

  1. Theatre of Fish
  2. Earth: An Intimate History
  3. Unseen Academicals
  4. Justinian’s Flea
  5. The Sterling Huck Letters (Thanks, Allison!)
  6. Names on the Land (Thanks, Simon!)
  7. Wintersmith
  8. The Wee Free Men
  9. A Hat Full of Sky
  10. The Naming of America
  11. The Cartoon Guide to Genetics
  12. The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
  13. Nation
  14. Failure is Not an Option
  15. Salt

2008

  1. Pathways in Science: The Earth and Living Things (1932)
  2. How Humans Evolved
  3. Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
  4. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
  5. Stephen Fry in America
  6. How Round is Your Circle?
  7. The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
  8. A Leg to Stand On
  9. Prometheans in the Lab
  10. The Ascent of Man
  11. Watchmen
  12. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories
  13. The Gastronomical Me (Thanks, Littonseseses!)
  14. What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People
  15. The Honourable Schoolboy
  16. Stardust (Saw the movie)
  17. The Explorers: Stories of Discovery and Adventure from the Australian Frontier
  18. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
  19. People Watching
  20. Cosmos
  21. When You Are Engulfed in Flames
  22. The World of the Vikings
  23. Things I Learned About My Dad: Humorous and Heartfelt Essays
  24. In the Event of My Untimely Demise: Twenty Things My Son Needs to Know
  25. Smiley’s People
  26. The Johnstown Flood (Thanks, Tina!)
  27. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples
  28. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Illustrated Edition
  29. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures (Thanks, NotMyAndrea!)
  30. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
  31. Hard Road West: History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail
  32. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold This was a seriously good book. Why hadn’t I read it until now?
  33. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean
  34. Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

2007:

  1. Sailing from Byzantium
  2. Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections
  3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Thanks, Simon, Paola, Chiara, and Giulia!)
  4. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
  5. A Measure of All Things: The Story of Man and Measurement
  6. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s
  7. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
  8. The Last of the Cape Horners: Firsthand Accounts From the Final Days of the Commercial Tall Ships
  9. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
  10. Shakespeare: The World as Stage
  11. Making Money
  12. Mama Makes Up Her Mind
  13. Galileo’s Daughter
  14. The Beverly Hillbillies: The Saga of Wildcat Creek
  15. Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
  16. I Am America (And So Can You!)
  17. The Family that Couldn’t Sleep
  18. The Ghost Map
  19. End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica
  20. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell
  21. The Radioactive Boy Scout
  22. A Swiftly Tilting Planet
  23. The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America
  24. A Wind in the Door
  25. Molvania (Jetlag Travel Guide)
  26. Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain–and How it Changed the World
  27. The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (thanks, Dad!)
  28. Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean
  29. War Reporting for Cowards
  30. Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America
  31. On Whale Island: Notes from a Place I Never Meant to Leave
  32. Our Southern Highlanders (thanks, Dad!)
  33. Charlemagne
  34. Diary of Indignities
  35. The Deep (thanks, Wil!) / On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Field Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin (combined to equal one book since they aren’t text-heavy)
  36. The Germanic People: Their Origin, Expansion, & Culture (borrowed from RJ)
  37. How to Cook a Wolf (thanks, sgazzetti!)
  38. Fisher’s Hornpipe (thanks, sgazzetti!)
  39. At the Water’s Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea
  40. The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (thanks, Tina!)
  41. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
  42. Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
  43. Two Towns in Provence (thanks, Doppelganger!)
  44. Albion’s Seed (Hello, 900 pages.)
  45. The China Voyage
  46. Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes
  47. King of Infinite Space
  48. The First Human: The Race to Discover our Earlier Ancestors
  49. Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (thanks, AMK!)
  50. Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
  51. In a Sunburned Country
  52. The Curve of Binding Energy (thanks, sgazzetti!)
  53. The Last Season
  54. At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay
  55. Fossils: The Key to the Past
  56. The Ice Museum
  57. After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England
  58. The Salmon of Doubt (thanks, sgazzetti!)
  59. Last Chance to See
  60. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
  61. A Walk in the Woods
  62. Annals of the Former World
  63. The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition
  64. The Clumsiest People in Europe, or Mrs. Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World
  65. Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition
  66. Third Person Rural
  67. Thunderstruck
  68. Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution
  69. The Seven Daughters of Eve
  70. Audubon’s Elephant
  71. A Crack in the Edge of the World
  72. Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador
  73. Prozac Nation
  74. How Language Works
  75. Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burning
  76. Adam’s Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny
  77. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture
  78. Curse of the Narrows
  79. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
  80. Bushworld

2006:

  1. Rendezvous with Rama
  2. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
  3. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
  4. Appalachia: A History
  5. I Was Vermeer
  6. The Selfish Gene
  7. Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea
  8. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide (rereading)
  9. The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way (rereading)
  10. The God Delusion
  11. A Wrinkle in Time (rereading)
  12. Symmetry: The Ordering Principle
  13. Pascal’s Wager
  14. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
  15. The City: A Global History
  16. Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door
  17. Grendel (rereading)
  18. Beautiful Evidence
  19. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character
  20. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
  21. The Human Zoo: A Zoologist’s Classic Study of the Urban Animal
  22. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others
  23. The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number
  24. He Comes Next
  25. She Comes First
  26. Smilla’s Sense of Snow (rereading)
  27. Our Inner Ape
  28. Into the Wild (a rereading)
  29. Salt: A World History
  30. Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song
  31. The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East
  32. 1421: The Year China Discovered America
  33. Thud: A Novel of Discworld
  34. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
  35. Kingdom by the Sea
  36. Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis
  37. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
  38. Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
  39. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold
  40. Sex with Kings
  41. The Explorer King
  42. A Year in Provence
  43. The Future of Life
  44. 1776

The Discoverers – suspended reading out of sheer annoyance until further notice

Magazines

Archaeology | Smithsonian | Discover | Mental Floss | Lucky