# What shall I read next? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 26, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959 "2007-08-26T02:53:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/1 "2007-08-26T02:53:47Z")
Here’s the stack in the house, plus a box winging its way **Shoshana** -ward. Which would you recommend I read next, and why? The _and why_ part is most interesting to me. Thanks. Chambers: _Culture Shock! Succeed in Business: Vietnam_ (2/3 done) Mortenson & Relin: _Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time_ (just started) Sage: _Physik (Septimus Heap, Book 3)_ (1/5 done) **Non-fiction** Bourdain: _Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly_ Choi: _Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters_ Coates: \*Cambodia Now: Life In the Wake of War \* El-Hai: _The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness_ Heath: \*Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die \* Moalem: _Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease_ Nafisis: _Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books_ Nazeer: _Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism_ Plotkin: _Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice_ Reiss: _The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life_ Rough Guides: _25 Ultimate Experiences: Ethical Travel_ Rough Guides: _25 Ultimate Experiences: Southeast Asia_ Savarese: _Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption_ Slater: _Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century_ Thwe: _From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey_ Templer: _Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam_ **Fiction** Burdett: _Bangkok 8_ Chabon: _The Yiddish Policemen’s Union_ Dick: _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ Dorsey: _A Paradigm of Earth_ Mieville: _Un Lun Dun_ Le: _The Stars, the Earth, the River: Short Stories_ Le Guin: _Powers (Annals of the Western Shore)_ Palahniuk: _Survivor_ Pessl: _Special Topics in Calamity Physics_ Robinson: _Pacific Edge_ Welsh: _Trainspotting_ **Humor & Difficult to Classify** Gerber: \*Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody \* Haggis-on-Whey: _Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive and Moist Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose_ Hodgman: \*The Areas of My Expertise \* Sill: _Beyond Birdwatching: More Than There is to Know about Birding_ Sill: _A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America_ Snickett: \*Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid \* ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2007, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/2 "2007-08-26T14:59:27Z")
[QUOTE=Shoshana] Slater: _Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century_ [/QUOTE] No particular reason. The only one I semi-recognized was _Androids_, but I haven’t read it and pretty much anything under Fiction is too easy an answer. Birdwatching isn’t my cup of tea. Books on war and genocide, while perhaps poignant, don’t seem like much beyond an excuse to feel good about yourself for caring. _Lolita_ itself is perhaps one of the more boring books ever written (which is impressive given its topic), so reading about someone reading it doesn’t sound inspiring. The subtitle of “The Lobotomist”–principally the length, not the reference to “maverick”–gives me the impression that the author is rather impressed with himself, and thus is better to ignore. Culinary doesn’t generally sound like a recipe for interesting reading, and Orient-stuff seems to advertise for New Agers but then be rather bland, “Come see the sandy beaches of wonderful Tibet!”-style travel destination text if you actually open it up. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2007, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/3 "2007-08-26T16:35:28Z")
[QUOTE=Sage Rat] No particular reason. The only one I semi-recognized was _Androids_, but I haven’t read it and pretty much anything under Fiction is too easy an answer. Birdwatching isn’t my cup of tea. Books on war and genocide, while perhaps poignant, don’t seem like much beyond an excuse to feel good about yourself for caring. _Lolita_ itself is perhaps one of the more boring books ever written (which is impressive given its topic), so reading about someone reading it doesn’t sound inspiring. The subtitle of “The Lobotomist”–principally the length, not the reference to “maverick”–gives me the impression that the author is rather impressed with himself, and thus is better to ignore. Culinary doesn’t generally sound like a recipe for interesting reading, and Orient-stuff seems to advertise for New Agers but then be rather bland, “Come see the sandy beaches of wonderful Tibet!”-style travel destination text if you actually open it up. [/QUOTE] Now that’s a pretty reply! Thanks! > [@](#): > > Books on war and genocide, while perhaps poignant, don’t seem like much beyond an excuse to feel good about yourself for caring. I can see that. I use these books for teaching, and I’m more and more involved with relief efforts in Southeast Asia, so they’re actually professionally relevant. > [@](#): > > The subtitle of “The Lobotomist”–principally the length, not the reference to “maverick”–gives me the impression that the author is rather impressed with himself, and thus is better to ignore. Excellent hypothesis. I’ll get back to you on this after I’ve read it (it’s also work-related). ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2007, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/4 "2007-08-27T11:05:59Z")
I thought I’d point out, though, that Tibet doesn’t have a beach. Are you tired? ---
**Author:** ![lilflower](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecccb3/32.png) [@lilflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lilflower)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2007, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/5 "2007-08-27T15:13:30Z")
I have a funny story about “Survivor”. Firstly, let me say that if you’ve read any other Palahniuk, you’ve read this one but if you’ve not read anything else by him, it’s worth a read. So I bought this book at an airport and this was my exhange with the cashier: She: Do you know anything about this book? Me: No. Why? She: A woman bought this bought this book about an hour ago and then brought it right back. She said that she read the first chapter and was so disgusted that she returned it. So I kept my copy and after reading the first chapter, I can see why someone who is a bit squeamish might not want to read any further. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2007, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/6 "2007-08-27T16:17:52Z")
I adored Three Cups of Tea and have now fully adopted the tradition mentioned in the title as my own. I am a tea lover so it was a no brainer. But now I point out to people I am sharing a cup with that, sharing our first cup makes us acquaintances, our second cup makes us friends and our third cup makes us family. ---
**Author:** ![Gulo\_gulo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bcef8e/32.png) [@Gulo\_gulo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gulo_gulo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2007, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/7 "2007-08-27T22:05:33Z")
[QUOTE=Shoshana] Mieville: _Un Lun Dun_ [/QUOTE] The chapters were evilly short which made it hard to put down (just one more!), it has great little illustrations scattered throughout the pages, and it had some nice clever twists that strayed from your usual quest-type books. Oh, and it has killer giraffes. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-shall-i-read-next/416959/8 "2007-08-28T19:25:03Z")
Add to the list: Beah: _A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,_ just handed to me as a gift.