I want to thank you all SO MUCH for the book suggestions! I know I'm a broken record, but now that my younger son (he's two years-old) has gained more independence I've been able to read more (as I'm able to get chores done while he's awake [and he "helps" me] rather than waiting until he's asleep to tackle everything), and I am not kidding, I am in heaven. Heaven! I do most of book searching by reading Sunday book sections as well as Entertainment Weekly / Newsweek book reviews and Amazon recommendations (you know, people who've purchased this book have also purchased X, Y and Z). I haven't been able to happily browse in the library since my children became mobile (my eldest is four) -- they love books and reading (or being read to) as well, but I'm uncomfortable leaving them alone in the children's section while I peruse the adult books. I first read Bill Bryson when we were living in Australia: I read his In a Sunburned Country and fell in love with his writing! In junior high school I read Fannie Flagg's Coming Attractions and think she did a great job evoking the time and place and style. Plus she made me laugh aloud, repeatedly. I participate in PaperBack Swap, a place where you can post your books to send to other members (it's a free club) and you can request books, too. Like, I posted a handful of books I no longer needed to own (paper- and hard- back) and various members requested them. I sent the books to them. I requested books in which I was interested (doesn't matter whose they are -- you receive credits for posting books, and you use those credits to request books from other members). One I recently read and which made me howl was Trisha Ashley's Every Woman for Herself -- definitely old British manor house descriptions galore in that one! Oh, and I Capture the Castle (lovely, lovely story) by Dodie Smith in which a family castle plays a significant role. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell takes place in Greece and besides being a delightful read also colorfully describes the family's home there. There was a horrible Katie Fforde I recently read (cannot recall the title at present ...) but boy did she do a terrific job describing the beautiful house, its wallpaper / furnishings, the kitchen and its set-up and the garden. Too bad the story itself was crap. I've never read or really read about Death by Inferior Design but I do love the title! I remember a few years ago reading a blurb about a nonfiction memoir by an American woman who married a Scots and how she rehabbed his family castle and had marital difficulties ... but I was never able to remember either the author or the title. I think I read about it in either House & Garden or Town & Country; searching online has yielded nothing (and I have tried). Maybe when my two year-old starts nursery school next year I can go to the library and comb through old issues of both magazines and see if I can come up with it. It sounded right up my alley!

These are some of the titles that I have personally tried: * The Power of Habit: Why We do What we do in Life and Business - Charles Duhigg * Anything by Malcolm Gladwell is fun to read (sociology type stuff) * Sin in the Second City (history of brothel in Chicago) - Karen Abbott * Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America - Steve Almond (just ok) * Woman: An Intimate Geography - Natalie Angier * Necropolis: London and its Dead - Catharine Arnold * The Great Influenza - John M. Barry (history of 1918 flu pandemic) * The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt * A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail - Bill Bryson (HILARIOUS!) * At Home - Bill Bryson * The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way - Bill Bryson - just ok * Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America - Barbara Ehrenreich (controversial and interesting) * The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl - Timothy Egan (fascinating and of regional interest). Fabbo. Anything by Egan will be good, I think. * The Wal-Mart Effect - Charles Fishman (examination of how Wal-mart has changed things) * Watching the English - sociology of UK - Kate Fox (interesting) * Color: A History of the Palette - Victoria Finlay - just purchased this one⦠* Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things - Randy O. Frost * The Dead Beat: History of obit writing - Marilyn Johnson * The Ghost Map - Steven Johnson (Victorian cholera epidemic and public health) * The Great Mortality (history of Black Death) - John Kelley * The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson * Thunderstruck - Erik Larson (he also has a new release out about US diplomat in HitlerâÂÂs Berlin) * IsaacâÂÂs Storm: deadly hurricane down south Texas - Erik Larson * The ChildrenâÂÂs Blizzard - David Laskin * Women of the Raj - Margaret MacMillan (specialist but interesting if you like British history in India - otherwise probably not!) * No Idle Hands: A Social History of American Knitting - Anne McDonald. (I donâÂÂt knit, but surprisingly this was one of the best books I have read this year. Very entertaining and interesting.) * The Library at Night - Alberto Manguel (good and intellectually challenging) * The Emperor of Maladies (history of cancer) - Siddartha Mukherjee - high up the TBR pile * The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean (good) * Rabbit-Proof Fence - Doris Pilkington (Australian classic about Aboriginal tribes - very moving) * Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine - Roy Porter * Stiff - Mary Roach * Bonk - Mary Roach * Spook: Science Tackles the After life - Mary Roach * Packing for Mars - Mary Roach * Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal - Eric Schlosser * And the Band Played On - Randy Shilts (upfront history of AIDS epidemic) - there is a new documentary about...

ColorMe, the systems have been funky lately. Interestingly enough, the movement of tectonic plates was embraced earliest by some very strange people of the Von Daniken ilk (but a decade earlier.) I read all those books and enjoyed them mainly because they gave me permission to think about things in a new way. Most of what I read I didn't believe or agree with, but for some reason the plate tectonics stuff held. So, by reading some incredibly stupid book probably about the hollow earth, I learned enough about plate tectonics to dazzle a geologist with my learning a decade or so later. Go figure. Of course I've also learned enough stuff that is dead wrong to cure anyone's bedazzlement. My vote for the worst non-ficion would be the biography Sara & Gerald, of her parents Sara and Gerald Murphy by daughter Honoria Donnelly. These two incredibly interesting and exciting characters (according to two biographies Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins and Everyone Was So Young by Amanda Vail) gave birth to a daughter who made them sound dull as ditch water.

I think there is a difference between writers we don't enjoy and a book being over-rated. I think some of Picoult's work is OK, really didn't like others, but I don't think her over-rated. She has a moderate audience but doesn't sell in the amounts that others do, particularly a lot of the sci-fi authors. There are many books I haven't liked that others have - The Secret History leaps to mind to mind. I thought it a load of codswallop, but I have yet to find anyone to agree with me *g* However, I wouldn't call it over-rated. JMHO of course.