A truly wonderful novel, especially if you grew up, as I did, in a pious Christian family, then drifted away from the faith while retaining emotional ties and are married to someone from the Middle West.

If, on the other hand, you want a book that will shake the roots of almost everything you learned in an economics or other social science class, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

John McCreery
Virginia Voter
Democrat Abroad
Yokohama, Japan

By the way, have you read Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason?"  I think my next book is going to be either that one, or JRR Tolkien's "The Children of Hurin."

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. ALSO: To all parents and grandparents- the book you MUST read is:
The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. This book emphasizes the importance of reading TO children even as infants ( and before) and with children as they grow and modeling reading ALL YOUR LIFE to children! This is a GREAT BOOK given to me by my AP Englich teacher friend and GREAT Democrat before the birth of my new grandson. My grandson has been read to every day since his birth by me his mother or his father ( sports on-line by dad but who cares...he's reading to him)!

By the way my neighbor's daughter is 7 and is reading Harry Potter already!She is reading on the 4th/5th grade level.

is reading Harry Potter.  That's very impressive!  The problem I have is with 27 and 37 year olds reading Harry Potter.  That's, well, a lot less than "very impressive!"

Harry Potter is not my idea of good reading BUT some people love fantasy and I guess if they like it it's OK by me.As a retired teacher it's so great to see people reading ANYTHING that even if it's a magazine...just read!

I also agree that DEMS should be volunteering in schools and elsewhere. There is an ongoing debate in Lynchburg about the "goals" of our local party.....social justice, volunteering, helping the less fortunate vs. those who say our purpose is to ELECT DEMOCRATS. Personally we can do both, I feel.

Kite Runner is a great book but so sad. A Thousand Splendid Suns is his new book. I need to get that!

I had to admit I could not believe when unloading the Minivan, yes minivan leave me alone, once we reached Charleston, SC to find my Vince Flynn and Brad Thor and three Harry Potter books belonging to my wife.
She tells me the Potter series his her Stars Wars. My wife was born the month the original Star Wars released,(no Kucinich jokes please) she never saw the first three in theatres (shameful) and dragged me to the opening of Order of the Phoeniz, my first Potter experience...now I know how she felt when I took her to Episode 1...clueless.

I volunteer at a local elementary school where quite a few of the kids come to school having never been read to or even had a book or magazine in the home.  Yes, right here in Virginia.  It is truly the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life, helping underpriviledged children learn to read. 

I'd like to suggest the following:  that local Democratic  committees all over the state adopt a school and volunteer to help with reading.  It demonstrates our values, helps our youth enormously, and just makes you feel good.  What do you all think?

I can't make it to any elementary schools, but I can to libraries, and I am sure that we can do it there as well. :)

then not only could children benefit but so could the Party and the candidates! 

I'd like to think that the DPVA could start a statewide outreach project like that.  I would love to see a project like that.  It's an all around win win.

and the slowly move up to the whole state. Sometimes these kinds of projects must "prove" themselves first if the leadership doesn't start them to begin with.

just finished Charlie Wilson's War, which covers the efforts by "the wildest man in Congress" and a rogue CIA agent to fund the mujahadeen geurillas in Afghanistan.

Starting the Kite Runner, another Afghanistan-centered book, this one fictional.

Next up, Steve Erickson's fourth book in his excellent Malazan series (perhaps the best fantasy series out now, next to George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire): House of Chains.

I'm reading Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights...admittedly at a post office line pace.  It's an interesting book just not a light read.  I was not aware that the 14th amendment plays such a crucial role in interpretation of the first ten amendments.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in constitutional civil liberties. It's fantastic.

to my 4-year-old. She loves him. She already quotes many of the catch phrases of the book. I am also reading her "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and one psalm a day. Her vocabulary is expanding a lot with our psalm reading, and she already learned what is a simile. :D

I am reading as much as I can on Plutarco Elias Calles, president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 and strong-man until 1934.

I am also reading a collection of poems by Octavio Paz called Early Poems, 1935-1955.

I'm close to finishing "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Up next for me is "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris who's other title "Letter to a Christian Nation" I recently finished. Today in America atheism is about as socially acceptable as homosexuality was in the 1950s. Finally, thanks to bestsellers like these and others, we are having a serious discussion about atheism instead of treating it like a disease. It's about time.

I think he's cute!  Besides, if you don't want to read, you can always watch a movie marathon.

Granted, the first one or two books were pretty ordinary but entertaining enough and I only read them because my kids did.  I'll read toothpaste tubes left around me.  But I began to see a change as the series continued.  The last couple of books have developed sophisticated themes of free will versus destiny, the banality of evil, alienation, temptation, self-destruction, self-sacrifice, and many other issues which aren't just about a simple-minded approach to good and evil.  It's not Tolkien, but it's not crap, either.  Somehow I've managed to read a lot of the West's great works in spite of my apparent "cultural infantilism", but Ron Charles makes it sound like you can't do both.  As for me, I'll probably read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows enthusiastically.  Right now I'm working my way through Jim Webb's "The Emperor's General", which has turned out to be a fascinating book, deeply researched, and with an absorbing account of post-war Japan.  Loving it so far.  Two hundred pages in and I still haven't found the naughty bits.  Macaca Allen made it sound like a porn novel. 

I have plans to read Fiasco all the way through this time instead of standing in the bookstore looking at the good parts; Imperial Life in the Emerald City; and a few other histories and cultural studies.  Usually I try to get in some poetry reading, too: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wilfrid Owen, Yeats (who hated Owen), and a few others.  Poetry is a great stress-reliever.  When my kids were young I used to memorize it to relax my mind, and recite it to them.  Each had a special poem.  My daughter's was "She Walks in Beauty" by Byron.  My older son's was "Tyger, Tyger" by Blake, and my younger son's was "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll.  Good times. 

 

"Teacher Man" Frank McCourt
"Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major" John Feinstein
"The Revenant" Michael Punke

For summer school, I'm assigning "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon.

I forgot that I'm reading "Doyle Brunson's Super System: A Course in Power Poker". What a fun book!

Wow, I am reading LeGuin's "The Disposessed" myself, it was sitting on my bedside table waiting for me to wade through a pile of non-fiction for over a year and I finally opened it and cannot put it down.  Not quite finished yet, but only a little to go.  This book is very interesting and challenges the reader to think a lot about our property system.

I tend to have two or three books in progress at a time - perhaps because I am scatter-brained.  I have "Getting Things Done" and "The Exception to the Rulers" in progress as well as "The Disposessed" (though I confess that since I opened LeGuin's book I have not even glanced at the other two).

I read Heinlein's "Waldo" yesterday (a fellow blogger sent it to me) while without power for a few hours, and I'm halfway through his "Magic, Inc."

As soon as the library has a copy available, I'll read the new Harry Potter.  I can hardly wait to find out how things end.