Friday, November 27, 2009

Counter Intuitive Reading

In the last 12 months, after several years of enforced inactivity due to post operative infection and 4 hip operations in 2008, I am amazed at how much more I seem to have read. As I spend less time sitting and more time doing why is it that I have read far more this last year?

I think it has to do with having the ability to get up and select books from the shelves as well as having the ability to travel more and as a result wait around in departure lounges. Perhaps it is also the realisation that after reading something - that is thought provoking - I am able, if I were so inclined, to do something about it, even it is is only replacing the book on the shelf, sharing it with a neighbour or friend or helping to set up a local group to take forward a book's aims.

Anyway I thought it might be useful to record the books that I have read in the last 12 months - so here goes:

( 1) Uncle Tungsen - Oliver Sacks - an account of his early fascination with chemistry.

( 2) Bad Science - Ben Goldacre - how the worried well are exploited by the inadequacy of their own numeracy

( 3) The Culture of Contentment - J.K. Galbraith - Prescient analysis of financial crises

( 4) Hegemony or Survival - Noam Chomsky - America's quest for global dominance

( 5) The Gods That Failed - Elliot & Atkinson - How blind faith in markets cost us the future

( 6) Perestroika - Mikhail Gorbachov - New (then!) thinking for our country and the world

( 7) Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders - John Mortimor

( 8) The Anti Social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole - John Mortimor

( 9) Rumpole and the Reign of Terror - John Mortimor

(10)Rumpole at Christmas - John Mortimor

(11)Parkinsons' Law on the Pursuit of Progress - C Northcote Parkinson

(12) Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities - Prof Ian Stewart

(13) Reckoning with Risk - Gerd Gigerenzer - Learning to live with uncertainty

(14) Trust - Anthony Seldon - How we lost it and how to get it back

(15) The Spirit Level - Wilkinson & Pickett - Why more equal societies almost always do better

(16) Putting Patients Last - Davies & Gubb - How the NHS keeps the 10 commandments of business failure

(17) The Shakespearian Stage 1574-1642 - Andrew Gurr

(18) Shakespeare's Advice to the Players - Peter Hall

(19) 1599 - James Shapiro - A year in the life of William Shakespeare

(20) The US Constitution - Hennessey & McConnell - A graphic adaptation

(21) A Fair Field and No Favour - Gideon Haigh - The Ashes 2005: the series of a lifetime

(22) Shaltiel - Moshe Shaltiel Gracian - One Family's Journey Through History

(23) The Bielski Brothers - Peter Duffy - 3 men who defied the nazi's built a village in the forest and saved 1200 Jews




Some books I have yet to start:

( 1) The Human Brain - Rita Carter - Illustrated guide to its structure, function and disorders
( 2) Fools Gold - Gillian Tett - How unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe
( 3) The Economics of Innocent Fraud - J.K. Galbraith - Truth for our time



And now some of the books I started but have not finished ... yet ... still...

( 1) The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk I got to page 432 of 1300
( 2) Imperial America - Gore Vidal
( 3) The Secret Life of Words - Henry Hitchings - How English became English

1 comment:

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