Science Survey
A nice month for science:
The Social Instinct, Nicholai Raihani
The Red Planet: A Natural History, Simon Morden
The Call to Antarctica, Leilani Rashida Henry
What’s Eating the Universe? and other Cosmic Questions, Paul Davies (Cosmology)
Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid, Thor Hanson
Chemistry for Breakfast, Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim
We’re now at 11/12 categories filled. All I need now is a bit of brains!
Classics Club Strikes Back:
Climbing Mount Doom
…hey, I read lot of books in August. Just….not ones I’m supposed to be reading.
The Unreviewed:
Seeking Christendom: An Augustinian Defense of Western Civilization, Brad Birzer. Still may say something about this; it’s Birzer’s original approach at offering a tribute to several mid-century defenders of the west, in an age of factories, states, and armed ideologies. The approach created several daughter works, including Beyond Tenebrae and Birzer’s biographies of Russell Kirk and Christopher Dawson, two of his subjects here.
Please Stop Helping Us, Jason Riley. Riley examines ways that DC’s policies designed to help black Americans are indirectly undermining them, much as Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams did in their own professional careers. (I keep forgetting to finish and post my review of Williams’ American Contempt for Liberty, which has a heavily focus on the failures of education policies and the black community. These may pair nicely together..)
Like a River Flows. A young author’s tribute to her grandmother, offered as reflective essays and letters written to her. The author is currently teaching in my town, and I suspect she may be invited to host a Lunch at the Library, so I wanted to read her book in case anyone asked about it. I thought it was sweet.
Unread Purchases:
The Warehouse, Rob Hart. The Circle meets Amazon.
The Metatropolis, edited by John Scalzi. An anthology of SF stories set in The City of The Future. Found while looking for new Scalzi titles.
Plans for September:
I’ve got 4 more netgalley titles (two science, two history), so they’ll come first, and then I really need to bunker down on some TBR and Classics Club stuff. The science focus in August helped me very-nearly finish off the Science Survey, and I would have done had I not been distracted by Brad Birzer, The Unbroken Thread, and some Roman fiction.
Reading Freely 
Yeah, I have ‘The Warehouse’. I was going to ‘twin’ it with ‘The Store’ by James Patterson.
Gasp! We finally bought the same book around the same time?
Well, I think I bought *my* copy about a year or more ago… so….. [lol] If we ever publish a review of the same book at the same time I’ll be astounded! [grin]
Mine was far more recent — I bought it along with all those SF thrillers I read earlier in the month, “The Choice” and all that. If Amazon hadn’t delayed shipping I would have knocked those two out, too. 😀
Ooh, I see Gatsby on the list. If/when you read it, I might reread it, too.
Also Cancer Ward, but that one is quite a bit longer. 😛
I’m game for a buddy read if you are — haven’t done that since…9th grade? XD It’s technically a re-read for me, as I tried it around 2004/2005, for an American lit. class. I don’t remember a blessed thing about it, though, except for that one line that haunts me:
” I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”
Yeah, let’s do it! Whenever you get around to it, just let me know. It’s short enough I can pick it up anytime…
How does a November 1 kickoff sound? I’m going to be focusing on TBR in September, and October is spoken for (science fiction + horror + German lit).
Works for me!
Quite a great looking set of science reads. Not that I need more books added to my TBR, but…
That’s mostly Netgalley, too. 😀 I forgot how addictive free books are..