Reading Material

So anyway, I got a little sidetracked in my previous post. I meant to thank Melanie again for organising my New Scientist subscription :)
I've also been reading some other books lately - something that I haven't done much of in recent years (besides conference proceedings!). In a way I enjoy being almost completely disconnected from the net during my (admittedly rather scant) personal time, because I have missed sitting back or snuggling up with a good book.

The most interesting book I've been reading is Kinsey, A Biography, by Jonathan Garthorne-Hardy. I haven't finished it yet - it's rather thorough - but it's the book that the recent film was based on, so I sort of know how the story ends anyway. But it's the detail that is fascinating, which you just don't get no matter how much you read online. I admire Kinsey greatly, because he was arguably a genius in two fields that most interest me - evolution and sex.

I also picked up The Constant Gardener, the film of which I loved (and first read about in New Scientist, incidentally - an example of that magazine's aforementioned socio-political coverage);
and The Harsh Cry of the Heron - a sort of guilty pleasure, it's the concluding sequel to a fantasy series (Tales of the Otori) whose appeal is the same lightweight fantasy that makes Harry Potter appealing to such a wide audience.

Finally, I've just finished reading Priceless, an autobiography by Charlie Daniels that I picked up randomly because it looked interesting. Charlie Daniels was a successful madam in the UK's sex industry, and her life story is indeed captivating - in a train-wreck kind of way - but unfortunately I thought the writing was somewhat forgettable.

One cool thing about Sydney is the number of independent bookstores that I like browsing, even if I don't buy anything. There's a bookstore on Oxford St (the epicentre of the gay and lesbian community) - no, not that kind of bookstore :p, though unsurprisingly with a decidedly mature and alternative bent - a few independent and second-hand bookstores along the main street of the very trendy and hip Newtown area (along with a T2 store :) ), and one small-but-packed-to-the-ceiling bookstore in the CBD, that I've visited so far. It all makes Dymocks and Angus & Robertson and the like look rather ordinary!