Following a suggestion made elsewhere, it’s not a bad idea to keep track of what I’ve read recently (i.e., in the last sour months or so, since school started).

1. The Prize Game

This was a pretty good book, about the legality of taking enemy ships and selling them for money during wartime. Good read, and a good lowdown on the legal theories behind it.

2. Freakonomics

This is a book about how the tools of economists can be turned to various purposes other than studying the economy, like the operations of drug-smuggling gangs and whether it’s worthwhile to take kids to museums and libraries growing up.

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

A re-read, actually, and just finished. Not bad.

4. Captain Hawaii

A semi-occult adventure story on the island of Kauai.

5. Wrinkle in Time

I really like Charles Wallace, even if he’s sometimes pretty dumb.

6. Blue Skin of the Sea

An elegant little novel.

7. House on Mango Street

Not as good a novel as I would have liked.

8. Inanna

A good read, even if its critics are correct that it’s not very scholarly.

9. Bastions of the North

Can you really count a book as read if you wrote chapter three? It was good to update myself on what’s going on in that world and timeline and game system.

10. Olympos by Dan Simmons

Getting another Dan Simmons novel was a Good Thing, in my book. I love the man’s writing style.

12. Fight Club

The book is better than the movie. Imagine that.

13. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Somehow I always managed to avoid reading this one in high school. Finally got around to reading it, and I have to say I was reasonably well-impressed. Necessary read, given how many of my students have read it, or had to read it, more specifically. Still, a good book.

14. The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk

Another good read, though occasionally deafening in how hard it bludgeons its readers to understanding how wrong, Wrong WRONG it is to abuse the environment.

15. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

An elegantly twisted novel.

16. The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay

Not the best thing by Kay, but certainly not the worst. A definite re-reader, I think.

17. The Persian Puzzle

A book about US-Iranian relations. A hard slog of a non-fiction book, but it’s reaping rewards when I read the paper and try to figure out whether Iran has nukes or not.

18. Phantom Soldier by John Poole

A good non-fiction account about how armies other than the US army fight, particularly those in southwest and southeast Asia.

19. The Transformation of War by Martin Van Creveld

a good non-fiction account of the re-introduction of non-state actors to the battlefield. I’ll have to digest this one a bit more before I’ll be ready to write a more comprehensive review of it. The main upshot of it is, alas, that states have made it too expensive for themselves to fight wars, being endlessly reliant on fancy and expensive toys, while non-state actors work to turn the tools of civilization into weapons…

20. the book by FGL

not much to say about this one. yet.

21. Significance by FGL

22. Meditations on Love by FGL

23. In the Middle

this is a book about running writing workshops in middle-school English classrooms. Read it a while ago, and was hoping to make use of it in my English classes. So far, I’m not really sure how to make it relevant. Maybe I just don’t think like an English teacher, yet.

24. Three Bowl Cookbook

This is a cookbook from the Zen Mountain Center in California. I like it, and its contents, a lot. I already have used about eight recipes from it, and I’m looking forward to working my way through the book. It’s the first cookbook I read literally cover-to-cover.

25. Brave Companions by David McCullough

A collection of short essays about American explorers, scientists and engineers. A excellent brigade of shorts, in general. The article on the drawings and plans for the Brooklyn Bridge was especially powerful for me.

26. 1776 by David McCullough

a history of the first major year of the American REvolution. Thumping Good Read, I’d have to say.

27. Mountains beyond Mountains

a non-fiction biography of Paul Farmer, a doctor who divides his time studying infectious diseases in Haiti and Boston, and has demonstrated clear links between poverty and epidemics. Interesting read, and definitely worth the time to read only a few pages here-and-there over several weeks at the start of school.

So, that’s twenty-seven books, and most of them not exactly light-weight. I’m not going to bother with a page-count, at least not right this instant. But I should at least print out the list so our Librarian can add it to the list of books read this fall at our school.