It's All About the Bike - Robert Penn

I wasn't so sure what this would be about (the bike! the bike!) but found it was a quick read that give some interesting background info about the creation and evolution of biking. Each component got a chapter to share the history and often a human-aspect of meeting someone who had devoted their life to that part. The only unfortunate part was that it made me want to actually have a really good bike; the one he built during the book ran him $5500 which doesn't seem so bad..

August 2014

7

The White King - Gyorgy Dragoman

This book is graphic without getting gruesome. Life under a horrid dictatorship is relayed through the eyes (and Hungarian to English translated, run-on sentences) of a young boy which allows for a genuine and naive look at terrible things that can easily be deciphered by the educated. Each disparate chapter encapsulated an important situation fraught with tension but when pieced together as a whole revealed the offensive truth. It still has me reeling.

September 2014
8.5

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat - Hal Herzog

This book nicely walks through a lot of the contentious issues regarding human thinking about animals. It presents an open-minded view, sometimes a little more open than I would like from the omnivorous author, and backs most things up with scientific research in an easily digested form. Beyond that he also gets into the philosophical and compares a few of the leading views, pointing out inconsistencies in each and essentially reiterating the point that there are inconsistencies that are nearly impossible to practically avoid. The section about cockfighting was eye-opening as was the long reflection about scientific research on animals. Even the personal accounts made for interesting scenarios and hypotheticals to reflect upon.

September 2014
6