I Double Dog dare you.

I'm in if I can go to the annual. I had to cancel last minute last time, but I think I'll be there this time. I'm up for anything, believe me, my reading list is all over the place.

Outlier by Gladewell.

I couldn't find a review of Outliers. But if it's a book about money, not my genre.

Janette I'm going to order Cold Storage. But I'm still open for another book.

Yes it sounds like it is about money. But it is about how people are lucky and good to be successful. He takes two people, one the person with the highest known IQ in the U.S. and explains why he is on a farm in Kansas, dirt poor. He compares that person to a fellow named Oppenheimer, who was caught trying to poison a professor and managed to convince the Board of Regents to keep him in college. O, he led the team on the A bomb. For those who have young children, I would suggest the book whether you discuss it at the annual or not. As for reviews, it was on Amazon Best of the Month, November, an excerpt:

Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math.

How about a book called The Watchmen. It will tie into one of the TDCAA annual speechs on the agenda.

I checked Amazon. There are two books by that name. One is a fictional thriller and one is a true crime story about an infamous hacker who targeted financial institutions. I must admit, the later sounds interesting. Let me know.

Janette A

This one.

Ok, Janette, let's read "Cold Storage" as originally planned. Also, I'm going to create a separate link for future book choices and this thread can revert to book reviews for books already read.

Look for info about where to meet in Corpus on the new thread.

Just finished rereading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I'm not sure I liked it as much as when I was younger, and it never sunk in that he occasionally dabbled in cocaine, but overall light reading for those of you who need short segments.

I also read Light on Snow, another of my 13 year old's choices. She reads the darnedest stuff. This one is about a widowed dad and his young daughter who find a baby abandoned in the snow. Who thinks up this stuff? But I really liked it. It's written from the daughter's perspective and ... somebody else read it and tell me what you think.

I started rereading my complete collection of Sherlock Holmes just before the new movie came out. There are a lot more stories than I remember!

Just finished Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol. If you like Washington DC, I would think this would be an interesting read for you. I'm curious to see what others thought about it.

And Ray, I've decided to read Outliers after all.

I highly recommend Outliers. Very good book. Not about money, it's about people.

If you like that one, one of Gladwell's other books called Blink is also really fascinating--discusses how people make decisions. Lots of discussion of police policy because one of the premises is that the more people around, the more mistakes are made, which is the opposite of what happens in a law enforcement emergency. It was a really great book. I've never seen anyone able to take statistics and tell an entire story behind them.

And he doesn't seem to have an agenda or an opinion, he just tells a backstory behind statistics and gives them a new perspective.

I just finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Traditional regency romance with zombies thrown in for added excitement. Quite amusing!

I've been wanting to read that one, LAS! Have you read the sequel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, yet?

Not yet. I'll have to request it at my local library! Are there others?

I just finished reading "John Adams" by David McCulloch. Superb biography about one of the most important, and underrated, figures in the American Revolution and the founding of our American system.

... and I just finished watching HBO's 7-part series of the same. (I own the book, too, but "reading for pleasure" is a foreign concept to me; you take what you can get when you have 3 pre-schoolers under your roof.) A fine cinematic work, if I don't say.

A terrific new book of essays encourages us all to be skeptical about statistics.

By Jack Shafer
Slate.com

Posted Wednesday, July 14, 2010, at 5:00 PM ET

If you're a journalist, a gluttonous consumer of news, or are easily swayed by the slapdash, stop what you're doing and go buy a copy of Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict. Set aside a couple of hours tonight to read three or four of the essays that academics Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill collected in it. Then, sit down in front of your computer and send me an e-mail to thank me for helping to end your enslavement to the dodgy numbers that taint journalism and public policy. It's not just a good book. It's a great book. And it belongs forever on your bookshelf.

The rest of the review

New autobiography of Carol Vance. Title: Boomtown DA. It was a real trip down memory lane for me and I learned a bunch of interesting stuff I hadn't known. I was fascinated, but it might not be as interesting to those without the Houston connection. Tells about some great cases, Elmer Wayne Henley, Judge Garth Bates, Dr. John Hill, the TSU riots, Justice Don Yarborough and many others.