Reading Stack

Via Boing Boing, I found this fun Flickr group called Reading Stack, where people post their current batch of books to read.

As a voracious reader who switches between 3-4 books at a time, I thought it'd be fun to post mine. From the top:

The Best Food Writing of 2006 by Holly Hughes. M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin first sparked my interest in food writing. They're tough acts to follow, but this collection of food essays culled from different food publications and web sites sounds promising. This edition is the seventh of a successful annual book series and was on my wish list. Our friend K.G. gave it to me as a birthday gift.

Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood by Laurie Notaro. This was another birthday gift from our friend K.G. I'm not familiar with the author or her work, but judging by the font cover and the author blurb (Laurie Notaro has never written for Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Lowrider, American Logger, Farm Show or McSweeney's. She lives, and will probably die, in Phoenix, Arizona. Miraculously, this is her second book.) it's going to be a fun read.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I don't read much sci fi, but D. and the gang have all read and raved about this book, and getting introduced to it is an initiation of sorts. I guess I'm a member of the club now. This one looks less daunting than Cryptonomicon -- which I didn't get to finish and was probably not the best introduction to Stephenson -- so I'm looking forward to this one. Besides, with Battlestar Galactica on hiatus, I need the fix.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. I'm big on time management and personal productivity. I've had a hardcover copy of this book long before it was picked up by the cool kidz, but D. wrote and highlighted it so much I had to buy another copy. I've skimmed through the book before, but plan to read it cover to cover now. Franklin Covey is getting unwieldy for me; time to streamline and find a simpler, smarter system. GTD seems to fit the bill.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. by Michael Pollan. Given my fascination with food and cuisine, this was a natural book for me to be drawn to. Yet unlike the cookbooks that I often read like novels, this one is not about preparing food, but about the origin and anatomy of foods we eat everyday. Judging by Pollan's Amazon Fisbowl interview, the term Children of the Corn is apparently no joke. A New York Times bestseller and one of Amazon's 50 Editors' Picks for 2006, this book was in my wishlist and a holiday gift from our friend J.

Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy. The recently concluded HBO series Rome reignited my interest in history, specifically about the Roman empire which I read about only superficially except for a couple of Gore Vidal's tomes. I've already read a chapter or two, and the book is as engrossing as all the positive reviews say. This was another of Amazon's 50 Editors' Picks for 2006 and another gift from our friend J.

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