Kaeli LC Challenge List

Here are the ones I've actually read...now to get started on the TBR list.

OK, forget the long list, here is the updated list on my WikiThing.

I just checked Beachcomber's Guide to Gulf Coast Marine Life out of the library a couple of days ago! Haven't read it yet....

I wouldn't call it a page turner. :) I used it for a class on Gulf Coast Biology a few years ago.

Here's my updated list-this time with Touchstones!
AE The Know It All
AG An Underground Education
AI SocINDEX (OK, no one really reads indexes, but I use this one ALOT, so I'm counting it)
AN Dallas Morning News
AP Library Journal
BD The Lucifer Principle
BF Blink: The Science of Thinking Without Thinking
BJ A Perfect Mess
BL Sacred Origins of Profound Things
BP The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam
BR God's Politics
BS Misquoting Jesus
BT Systematic Theology
BX St. Joseph daily Prayer Book
D The Decline and Fall of Practically Everyone
DA 1066 and All That
DC At Home with the Marquis de Sade
GN Human Osteology
GR Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked
GT A History of the Breast
GV Beginning Ballet
HB Microtrends
HF Humor in Advertising
HG Mortgages for Dummies
HM Made to Stick
HN Skipping Towards Gomorrah
HQ Selling Anxiety
HV The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories
K Presumed Ignorant!
KF The Complete IEP Guide: How to advocate for your special ed child
LB TechTactics: Instructional Models for Educational Computing
LC You're Going to Love this Kid: Teaching Students with Autism in the Inclusive Classroom
LH The Rambler (My university's newspaper)
ML I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard
NE William Blake
PA The Norton Book of Classical Literature
PC Jiffy Phrasebook: French
PE Mother Tongue
PN The Zombie Survival Guide
PQ The Count of Monte Cristo
PR The Museum at Purgatory
PS The Red Tent
PT The Metamorphosis
PZ The Golden Compass
Q A Short History of Nearly Everything
QD Napoleon's Buttons
QH Get a Grip on Genetics
QK Introduction to Plant Biology
QL Beachcomber's Guide to Gulf Coast marine life
QM McMinn's Color Atlas of Human Anatomy
QR A Field Guide to Germs
R How Doctors Think
RA Forensic Pathology
RB Basic Pathology
RC An Anthropologist on Mars
RG Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy
RJ 1001 Great Ideas for Teaching and Raiseing Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
RM Encyclopedia of Essential Oils
SB Neil Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening
T Cheaper by the Dozen
TH Dare to Repair
TR Digital Imaging for Photographers
TT Fat Quarter Quilts
TX Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
U Married to the Military: A Survival Guide for Military Wives, Girlfriends and Women in Uniform
Z Banned in the U.S.A
ZA Teaching Information Literacy

How was Misquoting Jesus? I don't own that one, but it's on my TBR list. I'm not actually reading the Beachcomber's Guide to Gulf Coast Marine Life all the way through because, as you say, it doesn't look like a real page-turner. It looked like something to flip through.

Ooh, I love touchstones!

Misquoting Jesus was an excellent book. I think I gave it 4.5 or 5 stars. It's well written, well-researched, and much more accessible than most books you'll find on Biblical commentary and exigesis (sp?). It helps to already have at least a basic understanding of the New Testement. It really helps if you're like me and addicted to Mysteries of the Bible and such.

Just read PL 522 .W45 1992 A to Zen: a book of Japanese Culture.

Chugging along...
JC The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
HC A Farewell to Alms: A brief economic history of the world by Gregory Clark

QB Bad Astronomy-this is a GREAT one to read for the astronomy section if you haven't read it yet.

I went to the works page to look up Bad Astronomy and then decided to wee what wikipedia had to say about the difference between astrology and astronomy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy
The article is noted as disputed and 'needs to be rewritten.' I was thinking that maybe astrology preceded astronomy, but we're into a messy area here. Maybe, I need to consult my horoscope to figure this out! Hah!

QA Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

I agree with the recommendation for Bad Astronomy.

It's not one to read if you're interested in the science, or in black holes and galaxies and extrasolar planets, but it's good for talking about the more local things -- why the moon looks bigger when it's close to the horizon, refuting idiocy like astrology and "we never landed on the moon", and so forth. It's a fun read.

As for the age of astrology vs. astronomy, I suspect it's mostly going to come down to definitions. Certainly the earliest use of looking-at-the-stars was purely observational, just people looking up. Finding shapes in the stars and telling each other stories doesn't really count as either, but finding predictable patterns would be astronomy by my definition. By "predictable patterns" I mean things like "plant when the Pleiades rise at sunrise", knowing where the Sun will rise on the Solstice, or noticing that there are some objects in the sky (the planets) that move differently from the stars, and in regular, predictable patterns. The buildup of beliefs surrounding these observations necessarily came later -- you have to know there are planets before you can decide they influence human behavior.

The Chinese were predicting eclipses way back, and there are observations of supernovae in many cultures going back for a thousand years.

I'm not going to rant about the privileging of wikipedia, which any yahoo can edit, on an issue like this. Here's a case where NPOV is just inappropriate -- astronomy is science and makes testable predictions. Astrology is baloney.

I just finished my book for P-Letter Perfect, which is a history of the alphabet and each letter. Very interesting. I'll post a real review of it later.

I also read Guide to Gargoyles and Other Grotesques (Washington National Cathedral Guidebooks) over the Christmas break. Hoping to get my list whittled down by half by the end of the year.

Almost forgot-it's NA3683

I just finished reading AY: The Old Farmer's Almanac, the 2008 version-as much as one reads an almanac.

F. Same kind of different as me-the first one on my list that I would NOT recommend.

Wow, you're really making some progress!

Just trucking along now...

CS2309 .A84 1991 What's in a Name?--Everything You Wanted to Know-I also wouldn't recommend this one; however, it was hard to find any in CS in my library, so I took what I could get.

TD171.7 You Can Prevent Global Warming-I would absolutly recommend this one. It's easy to read, accessible, and useful. I was walking around my house while I was reading it trying to implement as many suggestions as possible. Time will tell how much money it actually saves me!

It may be a joke, but I am totally counting it...

G1021 .O76 2007 Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth

OK, since it'd been so long since I've read a QM, I went ahead and updated that one.
So, QM: Your Inner Fish
and QP: Bonk!

Wow-it's been ages since I've been able to add one...
RM The Demon Under the Microscope-this is a great one for those of you dreading anything medical-it's much heavier on the history than the science.

I just added a whole bunch to my list (I've been reading, but not updating, so here I go again)...
BQ: Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk (this was helped by me taking a class on Buddhism this semester)
BT: Have a Nice Doomsday
BX: Why do Catholics Do that
DT: Long Way Gone
GF: Made From Scratch
HQ801: Things I've Learned from women who've dumped me (I split up the HQs because I read so much in it)
NC: Dr. Seuss: From then to now
ND: Art Explained
QH: The Rough Guide to Evolution