Here's What We're Reading in February, 2017:

I'm reading How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less: Without Leaving Your Apartment by Gregory Levey.

I'm reading Wait for me, Debo Devonshire's memoirs (youngest Mitford Sister). Very entertaining, written when she was 90!

Reading a book from this years SantaThing: On Looking. A very interesting book about walks around the block with very different experts, and therefore about how we see this world, and what choices we make to see and not see.

Also reading a book from last years SantaThing: How we die. Excellent, but a heavy subject matter. It needed a mention in the very excellent Being mortal for me to actually start reading it.

Also reading Cheap, which has an interesting subject matter, but I feel it's a bit anecdotal; it doesn't go a deep as it could.

I had to change three of the touchstones in this post: they pointed to the girl with the dragon tattoo, the very hungry caterpillar and the hound of the Baskervilles.
This is starting to get very annoying.

wester, I agree. I don't understand how touchstones can be so different from the title we input. I accept minor variations, but how we get to some of them baffles me.

The hubris of mankind is amazing and sometimes we win for a while. I finished The Control of Nature which is a fascinating description of three stand offs, the Mississippi River, an Icelandic volcano, and the San Gabriel Mtns by Los Angeles.

I'm reading Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas.

I'm starting Empire of the Bay: The Company of Adventurers that Seized a Continent by Peter C. Newman.

Working on John Steinbeck's A Russian Journal, his travels through the USSR just after WW II.

I just finished Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition and posted my review.

I'm reading The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf.

Born Bright: A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America
by C. Nicole Mason
3.5/5 stars
This is the true story of C. Nicole Mason who as an African American experienced life in poverty in Los Angeles, California during the 60s and 70s. She discusses what it was like to live in poverty, going to schools who did not encourage the academic growth of her race, struggling with moving from home to home and when she was determined to go to college, not knowing how to go through the ropes of applying for college since no one in her family or neighborhood went to college. She was able to beat the odds and got into Howard University and has made a success of her life. Very eye opening!

Since I never have just one going: In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland and Catastrophe: An investigation into the Origins of the Modern World by David Keys.

I'm reading The Raven's Gift: A Scientist, a Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey Through the Siberian Wilderness by Jon Turk for a book club.

I just started reading Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu, and I can tell I'm in for quite a wild ride.

>10 LynnB: One of the best books I read in all of 2016.

Still reading The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene. Fascinating, but not a quick read.

I'm reading Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician.

I'm reading The Year of No Clutter in a review copy from NetGalley - much better than I thought, as it's the author's personal experiences rather than a how-to book demanding you throw out all your books.

(moved to March, oops)