Freakonomics

Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
I was looking forward to reading this book for quite a while. Several of my co-workers read it and were all very impressed. Then, it was on the front page of Amazon for what seemed like forever. When the Kindle came out, many of the images displayed the cover of Freakonomics.
This was a fairly easy read. It had nice chapter divisions and moved very nicely. I loved learning about how things happened and seeing how the causes might have been much different than we thought. I don't want to spoil the book by discussing too much detail of each of the scenarios which are dealt with in this book.
These two writers have a very interesting understanding of the world. It combines economic principles without all the math. I would encourage anyone who would like to expand their understanding of how the world works to read this book.

A Case of Need by Michael Crichton

A Case of Need
by Michael Crichton writing as Jeffery Hudson
It's been a few weeks since I read this book, but I wanted to just right a quick post about it. It's very strange, but several of the books that I've read recently have dealt with issues surrounding abortion. Definitely a very important issue. This book is very quick moving, while taking time to probe issues surrounding abortion. I don't have much to say other than that, but if you're a fan of Michael Crichton, this is definitely a good read. Another one by Michael Crichton that I read too long ago to post about right now is "State of Fear". Excellent reading!

A Seperate Peace by John Knowles

A Seperate Peace
I was at my grandmother's house for a family activity and decided to peruse her library downstairs. I found this, and it had my mother's name in the front cover, so I decided it would be interesting to read something that she had read when she was younger. This book is set during WWII and tells the story of 2 young men and their friendship. The book touches on a lot of different emotions and feelings such as jealousy, anger and true friendship. It also gives an interesting viewpoint on WWII that those of us who were not around for that time don't really get to see very often. This book was a fairly quick, easy read and I would recommend it.

Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich

Bringing Down the House
After watching the movie "21", I decided that it would be very interesting to get a little more detail, and hopefully a bit more of the "true story" about what happened. I found it very interesting to see all the differences between what actually happened and what was portrayed in the movie. It was also fascinating to learn a bit more about how the card-counting was actually done. The sad part is at the end it explains why it would be so difficult to duplicate this effort. This was a quick read and kept my attention well throughout.