Reading

I want to do more with this page, but for now here are the micro reviews I wrote for books I read last summer.

A Very Small Farm: This was a book about a man who went to live on a small farm and build everything, including his house, himself. It was supposed to have the style of a modern Walden, but I didn't enjoy it very much. While a few parts were great the majority of it was rather boring.

Sense and Sensibility: Decent read. I loved the writing style, but the story had a long lull in the middle and the ending wasn't good enough to make up for it.

The Crystal Cave: The story of Merlin's childhood and growth into adulthood. The story is well told and takes place in a more historically authentic backdrop than other Arthurian retellings.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Have you ever wondered exactly where your food came from? This book traces four meals from their sources to the table (or, to the car in the case of the McDonald's meal). The first looks at industrial agriculture, the second focuses on industrial organic agriculture, the third on a small sustainable farm, and for the fourth Pollan hunts, gathers, or grows everything in the meal himself.

The Revolution: A Manifesto: Ron Paul's recent book. It explores a lot of what is wrong with the federal government. If you're already a libertarian you will be familiar with most of the subjects, but Paul provided some ideas that were new to me. If you're not, this book would serve as a good introduction to the philosophy.

The Year of Living Biblically: One man's quest to obey every law in the bible for a year, even the most obscure and absurd. Along the way he grows a bear, dresses in a white robe with a staff, blows a horn at the start of each month, hires a slave, and stones an adulterer with a pebble.

The Last Lecture: This is a short book written by a computer science professor dying rather young of pancreatic cancer. But, as the author says, it is a book about living, not dying. It manages to be entertaining despite the tragic undertone, and dishes out some good advice.

Freakonomics: Using the tools of economics, the author examines a series of questions with surprising results. What caused a sudden drop in crime in the 90s? Do political campaigns which spend more tend to win? How does a person's name effect their life? The book varies from intriguing in some areas to simply boring in others, but it is a decent read.

In Defense of Food: When I first encountered this book I was mildly interested, but didn't get around to actually reading it. After I discovered that it was written by the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma I decided to pick it up. The book is sort of a continuation of the themes in the Omnivore's Dilemma. The first book examined various different food chains and the culture, economics, and ethics surrounding eating, while this one tries to determine what is best to eat nutritionally. It wasn't as good as The Omnivore's Dilemma, but it's worth reading.