Ophelia's reading list -- a collection of anti-progress

This is as much to be on my case to finish this queue as it is for your own edification. That being said, on to the list!

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American Prometheus page 200/599

In a Sunburned Country page 352/352

A Court Divided page 0/384 (Albeit now out of date. I may not even read this one as the author struck me as an ivory tower idiot.)

A Brief History of Nearly Everything page 0/560

Becoming Justice Blackmun page 0/288

A Walk in the Woods page 0/304

A History of the World in Six Glasses page 0/240 (On loan to a friend.)

To See Every Bird on Earth page 0/288 (I've been putting this one off for fear I will become an avid birdwatcher.)

Active Liberty page 0/176

Sundown Towns page 0/576

Crossworld page 256/256 (I've been putting this one off for fear of learning how psychotic my avid crosswordsmithing appears to the rest of the world.) This was awful. It was obvious that Romano had read Fatsis' Word Freak and decided he, too, would jump on the bandwagon. Frankly, I get sick of people telling me how smart they are because of the school they attended. This is exactly what Romano subjected me to throughout all 256 pages. If I ever meet him I want to throw my drink on him. Just saying. I finished the book because the story of the people it is ABOUT is interesting. The story of the person it is WRITTEN BY may just as well be skimmed or altogether skipped. On a side note, I picked up my signed copy from Politics and Prose. If I had actually made it to the book talk that night, perhaps I would have seen first hand how pretentious -- and not all that smart -- Romano actually is, and wouldn't have wasted my money on it. Instead, I would have saved it and totally bought Fatsis' next book, when it comes out.

Fallingwater Rising page 0/496

Samurai William page 0/368 (This was a Monkey buy because he likes Shogun, and I figure I'll read it since it's sitting around not being read.)


Born to Kvetch page 0/320

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Books not yet purchased:

Dead Men Do Tell Tales Dr. Maples was an awesome man, so I feel compelled to read his book. I just can't seem to bring myself to buy it because the world is now crawling with CSI groupies. I wish Anthony E. Zuiker* had never crawled out of his cesspool. He and his television zombies should leave the science to people who actually understand science. I'm not even going to go on about how CSI undermines the judicial system by ingraining in jurors a false expectation of the investigative technologies available to law enforcement.)

The Diversity of Life, followed by everything else E.O. Wilson has ever written. If I could ask G-d for one gift, it would be for one day to be as smart as E.O. Wilson. I would gladly die immediately after, but to understand ant pheremones decades before my time? Whoa.

The Botanist and the Vintner I've been putting off buying this because it could be so good or sooooo bad. I'm reluctant to find out. If you've bought it/read it and would like to recommend/unrecommend/allow me to borrow your copy, please let me know.

The Selfish Gene and all other Dawkins books I have not read yet. Richard Dawkins is a beautiful, beautiful man, and whether he knows it or not, I'm going to marry him and have like, 10,000 of his babies, if for no other reason than to flood the gene pool with smart people that believe in evolution.

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* I actually had to look this up, since there's no way on EARTH I would know who created the CSIs. Now I'm angry about the time he has caused me to lose by looking that up. I want my 15 seconds back, Zuiker.