On Thursday morning I gave 5 boxes of books away to charity – which was excellent timing, because on Wednesday afternoon my Big Book Order from Amazon.com arrived. 
I’m way too excited about these new books … I want to read all of them first! I got:[ul][li]Winning ~ Jack Welch (recommended by my supervisor)[/li][li]The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations ~ James Surowiecki (not sure where I first heard about this, but it sounds wicked interesting)[/li][li]Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers ~ Mary Roach (I don’t care for her writing style in her Reader’s Digest articles, but I read good things about this book before I recognized the author’s name, and I think it’s a cool topic)[/li][li]Incubus Dreams ~ Laurell K. Hamilton (vampire erotica! woot!)[/li][li]America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction ~ Jon Stewart and the The Daily Show writers (I typically avoid anything political, even satire, but I just couldn’t pass this up)[/li][li]Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs : A Low Culture Manifesto ~ Chuck Klosterman (an SDMB recommendation from way back)[/li][li]Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter ~ Steven Johnson (I swear this was on my wish list before Johnson appeared on The Daily Show!)[/li][li]Hot Sauce ~ Scott Pomfret & Scott Whittier (a gay romance novel: I haven’t read a romance novel since high school, but the New York Times Magazine had good things to say about it (and the authors’ “Romentics” line of books) and I read about it on the same day that I placed the Amazon.com order)[/ul][/li]I’m finishing the paperback that I was reading when the order arrived, so for now all of these books are just taunting me from their bookshelf. I still haven’t decided which one I’ll read first, but I look forward to figuring it out when the time comes: one of my favorite “little things” in life is the time when I’m picking out which book to read next. 
[QUOTE=Misnomer]
[li]Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter ~ Steven Johnson (I swear this was on my wish list before Johnson appeared on The Daily Show!)[/li][/QUOTE]
I actually read about that book on Joystiq, which is a gaming blog I frequent. Let us know how it is, it sounded really interesting from the snippets I saw! I was snagged by his comparison of video games to books and how he believes the former stimulates the mind just as much as the latter. Can’t wait to see how he delivers on that one.