October Reads Borrows and Bought

October Reads
The Male Brain - by Louanne Brizendine
Please Look After Mom - by Kyung-Soon Shin
Graphic Design For Non-Designers - Tony Seddon
Habibi - Craig Thompson
The Walking Dead Vol2 - Robert Kirkman (graphic novel)

October Bought & Borrowed
(Borrowed from the library)
Wild at Heart - by Barry Gifford
The Walking Dead Vol2 - by Robert Kirkman
(Purchased from Amazon and Powells)
The Male Brain (3 copies!) - by Louanne Brizendine
Habibi - by Craig Thompson
(Purchased from Friends of the Library sale - I'm an addict!)
Running with Scissors:A Memoir - by Augusten Burrows
Lies My Teacher Told Me - by James Loewen
Peony in Love and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - by Lisa See
Outlander - by Diana Gabaldon
Foucault's Pendulum - by Umberto Eco
How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents - by Julia Alvarez
Into Thin Air - by John Krakauer
The Witches of Eastwick - by John Updike
Reading Lolita in Tehran - by Azar Nafisi
Loving Frank - by Nancy Horan

My Latest Evangelism-Worthy Books

 

Louanne Brizendine blew me away and made me an annoyingly pest of my friends after reading The Female Brain in April.  I recommended it to all my (many) male colleagues with tween and teen daughters as well as anyone going through or supporting a spouse through menopause.  In addition I used many of the astonishing lab result finds to start (or stop) many a dinner conversation [e.g. did you know a mothering rat will choose the button that releases a suckling baby rat 100% of the time over the button that releases CRACK!?  the feel-good hormones released when nursing are a better high for the human-brain-hormone similar rats!].  Well, I figured The Male Brain would be similar but now-familiar fare since she often highlit the differences in males and females throughout Female.  Yet, once again, I was blown away by Brizendine's voice and data.  I planned to buy a copy for my sister who has a baby boy when I was in the first chapter.  Then I read the Teen chapter, followed by Mating, Parenting and Retirement chapters and the epiphanies kept rolling in.  So in the end I purchased one for myself and both my siblings and have started a new evangelization compaign for this captivating book.  It's non-fiction which I rarely deign to read, but it reads like a narrative, is short (1/2 of the book is just reference material) and divides topics easily into 5 life-stage chapters.  It is emminently readable, and hopefully for others - awesome.  Super-highly-hyperbolically recommended!  These two were probably my favorite books of the year so far (and I've read some great ones this year!) 

July Reads Borrows Boughts

Summer flus led to a limited reading list this month but the selection at least held some diversity.  I read many a graphic novel this month to complete my Top Ten List , then finished off a memoir, non-fiction science book & a girly beach read.  None of the latter make it into my 'must-read' list but they were all somewhat entertaining.  I'd recommend Tina Fey's Bossypants out of the lot for some really great laughs and a very human insight into her dazzling self.