rebecca's pocket

» This week's update includes the 100 best beach books ever, essential reading for armed services members, nautical pioneers, and the 2009 Booker Longlist.
For Adults:
NPR: Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books Ever
Nature: A break from the bench Summer reading recommendations
Navy Times: House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton's 2009 List of 50 Essential Books [Word doc] (a supplement to his 2003 Reading List [Word doc]). Recommended for military officers, noncommissioned and petty officers, and all Congressional members
TimesOnline: MP's picks for summer holiday reading
The Man Booker Prize 2009 Longlist
Seattle Public Library: Explore your Inner Captain: Great Reads about Nautical Pioneers
AIGA: Designed for Summer Reading
GOOP: Summer Reading Suggestions
The Daily Beast: Last-chance summer books
JTA: Summer reading and the Holocaust
Cheeky Fresh: Summer Reading List For Millennials
Male Rights Network: A Masculinist Reading List
Kenneth C. Davis: A Historian's Revolting July 4 Reading List

Children and Young Adults:
Seattle Public Library: More Summer Staff Favorites for Children: Historical Fiction

Bonus: Reliable resources for choosing book club books

» What is the best macaroni and cheese you've ever had? You might be having summer where you live, but trust me - here, it's macaroni and cheese weather.  [ 08.05.09 ]

» Rafe's One must-read column on health care and the view from a Canadian.  [ 08.07.09 ]

» This week's update includes time travel, military history, the Man Asian Literary Longlist, crime, fantasy, and books for dudes.
For Adults:
U.S. Army Center of Military History: Recommended Professional Reading List
BBC: The Big Read Top 100 (this is the source for the list that's been going around Facebook; I've read 43 of them)
The Economist: Summer reading (Eastern Europe)
The Guardian: Linda Buckley-Archer's top 10 time-travelling stories
The Daily Beast: Dog Day Reading List
Seattle Public Library: Icy Cold Reads
2009 Man Asian Literary Prize: Longlist
ABA: The September Indie Next Great Reads
Library Journal: Books for Dudes: Dog Day Bildungsromans
The Reader's Advisor: Best Reviewed Crime Fiction of the Past Ten Years
Politico: Expert suggestions for summer reading Recommendations for reading on The Middle East, Energy, Economic History, and American political History
Central Crime Zone: The 2009 Crimespree Awards
World Fantasy Convention: 2009 World Fantasy Awards
Awakening Grace: An Online Puritan Reading List
LibertarianChristians.com: Summer Reading - Top 10 books that you should drop everything to read now...
Comic Book Resources: Friday's Beach Reading
New Age Comics with Andrenn: Summer Reading
Roll Away the Dew: Summer Reading list for Non-traditional MBAs

Children and Young Adults:
Seattle Public Library: Even More Summer Staff Favorites for Children

Bonus: Newsweek: Death Becomes Them "Literary" authors are writing noir - but they're often not that good. So who should you read instead?

Writers such as James Ellroy, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, Donald Westlake, Walter Mosley, Laura Lippman, James Sallis, Megan Abbott, and George Pelecanos have managed to infuse crime novels with a quality of writing not seen since the days of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain.

I really dislike the "serious" artist's snobbishness toward genre. I've seen this from authors and actors both, and all it tells me is that they aren't familiar with the form - or are too concerned with their imagined status to learn.  [ 08.10.09 ]

» NYT: Cooking with tomato leaves by Curious Cook Harold McGee. No, really. And here's the recipe for Paul Bertolli's Leafy Tomato Sauce .  [ 08.11.09 ]

» The Birthers and Jim Crow 2.0: The manufactured anger driving the birthers and health care town halls is the same white rage that has divided poor white people from poor black people for all of our history.

Most commentators try to make sense of it by harking back to Nixon and the GOP's "Southern strategy," when it consolidated regional power by stoking reactionary fear of the civil rights movement. That's true as far as it goes. But years earlier Martin Luther King described it more broadly. "The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow," he explained, summing up the region's history in a sentence. "And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man."

(thanks, LD!)  [ 08.12.09 ]

» What's harder than planning next week's meals for your family? Planning meals that will be appetizing, lightly packaged, and will be safe to eat for 5 years - on the way to Mars and back.  [ 08.13.09 ]

» This week's update includes the Hugo awards and Thurber nominees, President Clinton's and Obama's recent reading, footnoted novels, and holiday-themed novels slated for the upcoming holiday season.
For Adults:
2009 Hugo Award winners
2009 Thurber Prize nominees including Ian Frazier's Lamentations of the Father, which still makes me laugh until I cry
WSJ: Private Equity Beat: A Summer Reading List
Daily Beast: President Obama's reading list since taking office
Los Angeles Times Books: What President Clinton has been reading lately
The Daily Beast: A Mad Men reading list read like Don Draper
Seattle Public Library: Staff Favorites
Nightstand Reading: Seattle novelist Heather Barbieri's late summer reading
The Reader's Advisor: Footnoted Novels
Socialist Worker: Summer reading for activists
Bibliophile By the Sea: New seasonally-themed books for the 2009 winter! holiday season
A Reading Recruiter: A Reading List to Build your Work Life Skills

Children and Young Adults:
NPR: A Classic List Of Must-Read Children's Books
NYT: Summer Reading Chronicle For kids who are ahead of the game and have finished their Harry Potters, Hobbits and other classics of summer reading lists, here are three recent novels they could polish off for fun before school begins
Seattle Public Library: Going to School for the First Time

Bonus: How the Amazon bestseller list works (and which marketing has the strongest effect)
 [ 08.17.09 ]

» Read this fascinating Wall Street Journal on the history of government influence and intervention in the US housing market, The New American Dream: Renting. Did you know that a home mortgage - which has come to represent good character and personal stability - used to carry a stigma?  [ 08.18.09 ]

» NYT: Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think.

When we say that preschoolers can't pay attention, we really mean that they can't not pay attention: they have trouble focusing on just one event and shutting out all the rest. This has led us to underestimate babies in the past. But the new research tells us that babies can be rational without being goal-oriented.

 [ 08.19.09 ]

» Please read Rafe's very thoughtful post about the health insurance reform proposals that are making their way through Congress. As usual, he's balanced and insightful, and I think he's right in his approach.  [ 08.20.09 ]

» George Lakoff on effectively explaining what's at stake in the health care reform debate.

Insurance company plans have failed to care for our people. They profit from denying care. Americans care about one another. An American plan is both the moral and practical alternative to provide care for our people.

 [ 08.21.09 ]

» NYT: My Dinner With Julia. Architecture photographer Pedro E. Guerrero remembers photographing Julia Child's kitchen - and the dinner she prepared for him.  [ 08.21.09 ]

» Matt Thompson's the 3 key parts of news stories you usually don't get. Smart, smart, smart and absolutely correct, as is his point that reporting that contained these elements would both create a better-informed citizenry and increase demand for more of the same. (via waxy)  [ 08.24.09 ]

» NYT: Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich.

[Stephen and Milie] Biellier...came to the convention praying that this would be "the overcoming year." They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line. [...] They say the Copelands rescued them from financial failure 23 years ago, when they bought their first truck at 22 percent interest and had to rebuild the engine twice in a year. [...] "We would have failed if Copeland hadn't been praying for us every day," Mrs. Biellier said.

I'm a huge believer in the power of belief to inspire people to see a way through the most discouraging circumstances, but reading about some of the things the Copelands are asking their followers to fund just made me mad. And sad that they are so shamelessly fleecing their flock.  [ 08.26.09 ]

» This week's update includes Nancy Pearl's recommended mysteries, books on food and computer code, and late summer reading for kids.
For Adults:
NPR: Mysteries You Might Have Missed Along the Way recommended by Nancy Pearl
The Malta Independent Online: Summer reading
Spectator: Summer Reading List
Culinate: August food books Delicious reading
Techdirt: Book Reading List 2009
Code Climber: 11 books for a .NET Summer reading list
Shelf Talk: School Days: These adult novels take you back

Children and Young Adults:
Oprah: What is First Lady Michelle Obama reading with her daughters?
School Library Journal: Swim Team
Reader's Advisor: Under the Radar: Not Your Traditional Back-To-School
Canada.com: Late-summer suggestions for kids' reading

» My bags are packed and I'm off for an adventure. See you after Labor Day, and enjoy the last week of the summer!  [ 08.31.09 ]