Part of the reason I haven't been posting much lately is that I've been reading. (Well, okay - that's not the only reason. But it's a lot more satisifying to say that I've been doing something productive like reading than to admit I've been doing my impression of a sloth.)
One book I've liked is Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, an examination of motivations that lead us to make the wrong choice when we know better, such as the power of "free" items. The author is a behavioral economist who teaches at Duke and MIT, and I heard him speak earlier this summer at a Richmond Fuqua alumni event. Pretty interesting material, although not entirely new to me.
In the area of wine, I enjoyed To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle, a very thorough discussion of the problems with corks and the limited success of various alternatives. I had thought I had a good understanding of the issue, but reading this made me realize that the various solutions aren't quite as good as I had thought.
And I've been reading some fiction lately, too. Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine is some of the best science fiction I've read lately, not that I've been reading all that much science fiction in the past ten years. Among fiction, I've probably read more mysteries than anything else. But Haldeman's latest doesn't disappoint.
I'm now in the middle of Sunshine - a delightful vampire tale. Pretty good escapist, summertime reading.
I happily recommend all of them.
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