Bryn Barnard's
Outbreak: Plagues that Changed History is a non-fiction illustrated book for kids about pandemics that have killed people throughout history. While it's for kids, it's a good intro to the topic for adults too. It covers five specific plagues and then talks a bit about why public health measure to contain disease are a good idea.
posted by kristin at 2:11 PM
I read Booker T. Washington's autobiography,
Up from Slavery, gradually over the last few weeks. It covers his early childhood, schooling, and then the founding and expansion of the Tuskegee Institute. The one thing that really struck me as I read it was how unfortunate it was that Washington's optimism about an end to racism was unfounded.
posted by kristin at 2:08 PM
Takashi Matsuoka's
Cloud of Sparrows has samurai, geishas, and Christian missionaries. I'll be reading the sequel soon.
posted by kristin at 2:06 PM
My dad left Thomas Berger's
Adventures of the Artificial Woman out for me to read while I visited them in Denver last week. It was a quick read (one sitting for me) about a man who, tiring of trying to find a human woman to spend his life with, made an artificial woman to be his wife and their further adventures. Decidedly quirky and a bit disturbing.
posted by kristin at 2:02 PM
I picked up Ma Jian's
Red Dust a few years ago after flipping through it at Powells. It's a travel memoir of China, with the interesting twist that it was written by a Chinese artist, rather than a Westerner. After getting fed up with his job and politics Ma decided to see his country and traveled for 3 years in a very low-budget way. I can't even imagine taking a similar trip around the US.
posted by kristin at 2:00 PM
Dan Simmons'
Fires of Eden is a horror novel, in the sense of using supernatural elements rather than of being very scary, set in Hawaii. I think it was the first book I've ever read that used the Hawaiian mythology as its basis. Not bad, but definitely not as good as his SF.
posted by kristin at 1:57 PM
I'm about halfway through Neal Stephenson's
The Confusion and just wanted to mention that I really should have re-read
Quicksilver first since it's been a long enough time that I don't remember much of what happened in it. I didn't intentionally pick up another book with Newton as a character right after
The Last Witchfinder but the books are actually going together well.
posted by kristin at 11:36 AM
James Morrow's
The Last Witchfinder differs from his previous works in genre (historical fiction rather than SF) but not as much in tone (it's still not the best read for the very religious). Set in England and then the American colonies, the main character is the daughter of a witchfinder who, after her father helped her aunt be burned at the stake, vowed to spend her life proving that his profession had no factual basis.
Oddly, the other narrator is a book: Newton's
Principia Mathematica.
posted by kristin at 11:33 AM
Brian Fies'
Mom's Cancer is a short graphic memoir of his (and his family's) experiences dealing with his mom's diagnosis of and treatment for cancer. Apparently it started as a web comic, but I was glad to read it in book form since the whole story was there.
posted by kristin at 11:31 AM 
