Thursday, December 1, 2011

Things I've Noticed: My Next few months are filling up with Non-Fiction

As we move towards the end of the year I can honestly say I've had a great 11 months in genre reading and am looking foward to a little non-fiction over my Christmas holiday!

What titles will I be reading? Why I'm glad you asked.

Here are my top five non-fiction books I plan on getting around to in the next three months:

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester
A bit of a cheat here, as I'm almost finished the book (it's for a book club), but the idea of reading the story of how the most comprehensive dictionary I've ever come across came about has a lot of appeal to me. (Side note: the most common reaction I get from people who see me reading the book? Hey Bookmonkey - you could just ask me you know! Honourable runner up: 42!)

Here comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, by Clay Shirky
This one comes as a strong recomendation from my wife, who after spending nearly a decade listening to me go on and on about communication theory and popular culture says that she has found a book right up my alley and if I don't take the time to read it after spending a whole month last year focusing on Twilight she's going to buy me a Team Edward shirt and make me wear it as the new image for this blog!

The Net Delusion: The Dark SIde of Internet Freedom, by Evgeny Morozov
A book that talks about how much damage the Internet does without focusing on Adult Content? As a blogger myself, I've got to say the title alone has me pretty interested.

The Swerve: How the World became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt
The book focuses on one of the most influential poems in history, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and how its rediscovery helped usher in the Renaissance. As a big fan of Ancient Rome, and lately of the Showcase series The Borgias, I'm starting to get pretty interested in this period of history.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, by James Gleick
The idea of a book looking at the history of Information as a concept, and how it has basically become the currency of our current era sounds pretty cool to me, so yeah, I'll definitely be checking it out!

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