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pamela fox's reading list

Here are the books I've read recently (ordered by when I read them). You can also filter by these tags: motivation, code, food, sex.

• You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
  Burroughs, Augusten

  LIKE.

• 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot
  Wiseman, Richard

  LOVE. Science-based answers to the kind of stuff self-help books try to teach you (and fail).

• Amusing Ourselves to Death
  Postman, Neil

  LOVE.

• Beware of the Dog
  Dahl, Roald

  LIKE.

• Steve Jobs
  Isaacson, Walter

  LOVE.

• Brain Bugs
  Buonomano, Dean

  LOVE.

• Pretty: A Novel
  Lauren, Jillian

  LIKE.

• Made to Stick
  Heath, Chip, and Heath, Dan

  LOVE.

• The Most Human Human
  Christian, Brian

  LOVE. Probably my favorite book of the year - covers computing, language, the soul, everything.

• Final Jeopardy
  Baker, Stephen

  LOVE.

• Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman
  Richard Feynman

  LOVE. A bunch of short stories about Feynman's life - including stories of picking up girls and solving physics puzzles. Inspiring and entertaining.

• Born to Run
  McDougall, Christopher

  LOVE.

• Little Earthquakes
  Jennifer Weiner

  LIKE. A novel about a group of pregnant women and the obstacles they encounter in their first year after pregnancy. Good read..and re-inforced that I won't be baby-making anytime soon. :)

• The Diamond Age
  Neal Stephenson

  LOVE. A sci-fi novel that follows a women from an abusive childhood to an epic adulthood -- I loved it because it reminds me of my favorite movie, Puff the Magic Dragon. Also makes interesting observations on how society is structured and what makes people intelligent.

• The Psychopath Test
  Jon Ronson

  LOVE. An account of the author's investigation into what it means to be a psychopath, his interviews with actual psychopaths and the people who try to diagnose them. Really interesting to see the conclusions he reaches..makes you think.

• Them
  Jon Ronson

  LIKE. An account of the author's investigation into extremists, terrorists, and the like - it's entertaining and interesting to get a peak into their daily life.

• Salt
  Kurlansky, Mark

  LIKE.

• The Science of Kissing
  Sheril Kirshenbaum

  LOVE. A great overview of the history of kissing, its variance across cultures and different animals, and the science of what happens in your body while kissing.

• Snow Crash
  Neal Stephenson

  LOVE. A thrilling sci-fi novel which touches both on web technologies (coining the term avatar), history, and human languages - all interesting to me.

• Dry: A Memoir
  Burroughs, Augusten

  LIKE.

• Confessions of a Public Speaker
  Scott Berkun

  LOVE. True tales and techniques from a writer that does a lot of public speaking. It's both funny and full of practical tips, and includes nice insights on the effectiveness of teaching.

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
  Heath, Chip, Heath, Dan

  LOVE.

• The Happy Body
  Aniela Gregorek and Jerzy Gregorek

  LIKE. A book and philosophy by two olympic weightlifters on their approach to fitness and health. It includes some great arguments against endurance training and for strength training. The nutrition advice seems well-founded, though some of their beliefs seem lacking in scientific studies (like snacking every 3 meals).

• A General Theory of Love
  Thomas Lewis

  LIKE. A book about why people connect to and love others (particularly their children), including chapters on our different brains, memory, and evolution. The language is a bit overly florid at times, but it has some great insights.

• The Pun Also Rises
  John Pollack

  LOVE. Written by a champion punner, this book chronicles the history of the pun, including how its varying popularity (and lack thereof), and the different types of puns. It also argues that puns are a uniquely human skill - something to be proud of. Great for anyone who loves puns!

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  Mark Haddon

  LOVE. A story written from the perspective of an autistic teenager. Makes you think about what your thinking process might be like if you were autistic too.

• Drive
  Daniel H. Pink

  LOVE. An exploration of recent research about what motivates humans, and how it differs from what we believed in the past. Targeted at managers, but relevant to anyone.

• Survival of the Prettiest
  Nancy L. Etcoff

  LOVE. An exploration on the research of human beauty, evolution, and why we value what we do. Cites many interesting studies and gives you lots to think about.

• How to Stop Worrying & Start Living
  Dale Carnegie

  LIKE. A book of anecdotes and tips for reducing the time you spend worrying in life. It has some good ideas, but it also got overly Christian in the end and relied too much on anecdotes.

• Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire
  Sarah Katherine Lewis

  LOVE. The memoir of a woman who decided to try out adult work in Seattle, including private shows, massages, cage shows, and amateur porn. It's funny and real, and the author is open about not being sure herself how she feels about how adult work & feminism work together.

• The Selfish Gene
  Richard Dawkins

  LOVE. A book that describes evolution from a gene-centric point of view. It's really interesting, but it is a long read and felt a bit over my head at times.

• How To Win Friends and Influence People
  Carnegie, Dale

  LOVE. Great read for anyone who works with people - i.e. everyone.

• Packing for Mars
  Mary Roach

  LOVE. An exploration of the typically unexplored facets of space travel, like astronaut selection, waste elimination, monkey masturbation, and food hydration. I didn't get into it as much as her other books, but it was still a very interesting read.

• The Primal Blueprint
  Mark Sisson

  LOVE. A description of Mark's philosophy of living like our ancestors lived 10,000 years ago, which entails a no-grains eating style, good sleep, good play, moving slowly alot, sprinting, and lifting heavy things. The eating style reflects much of what I've read from the other books, as it's based on the science of the insulin response, and the other recommendations make a lot of sense. A great book about getting back to our roots in all parts of life.

• Thanks for Coming
  Mara Altman

  LIKE. The true story of a woman's attempt to achieve orgasm, where she attempts about 5 billion different strategies. Read it to find out which one worked.. :)

• Why We Get Fat
  Gary Taubes

  LOVE. A nice condensation of the research presented in the much longer "Good Calories, Bad Calories". This book disputes the myths that have been propagated for the last 50 years, and actually explains how fat is formed in the body and how one can lose weight accordingly.

• OMG! I can eat that?
  Jane Kennedy

  LOVE. A cookbook of low-carbified restaurant & comfort food recipes, like fried zucchini chips & cauliflower rice. The photos make me drool, and it excites me that I can still eat these foods and avoid the bad carbs.

• Cognitive Surplus
  Clay Shirky

  LOVE. A great read about how humans will use their freetime, particularly in regards to the media and the growing ability to produce and not just consume. Particularly relevant if you're working in the social or collaborative space.

• Superconnect: Harnessing the Power of Networks and the Strength of Weak Links
  Richard Koch & Greg Lockwood

  LIKE. A book about the connectedness between people, and how important connections are. It has a good point, but seemed a little too reliant on anecdotes at times.

• The 4-Hour Body
  Timothy Ferriss

  LOVE. A series of tips on hacks for losing weight, gaining muscle, getting better sleep, etc - all based on the the author's rigorously scientific experiments and data tricking. Interesting, entertaining, and hopefully useful - I am trying some of them out now.

• My Booky Wook
  Russell Brand

  LIKE. Both funny and insightful, it recounts his childhood and various addictions (drug, sex). It's heavy on the British lingo, which makes it both educational but also harder to read at times.

• Fast Food Nation
  Eric Schlosser

  LOVE. A great book about the effect of modern industrialized agriculture on our food, our society, and our environment. Very interesting.

• Food Inc.
  Karl Weber

  LIKE. A collection of essays from journalists & organizations on the topics addressed in the Food, Inc. documentary. The essays vary in quality - some are quite good, but others make for more rote reading.

• Sex at Dawn
  Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha

  LOVE. Very interesting read about the history of our species, and whether monogamy is actually an intrinsic part of us (answer: it's not). Lots of stuff to think about.

• Programming Google App Engine
  Dan Sanderson

  LOVE. A well written book explaining App Engine, with many chapters dedicated to an in-depth look at the datastore, one of the trickiest parts. Slightly better for Python devs than Java devs.

• HTML5: Up & Running
  Mark Pilgrim

  LOVE. A humorous, informative, and well-written introduction to various parts of HTML5 - the new semantic tags, multimedia, microdata, geolocation, offline storage, and more.

• Food Rules
  Michael Pollan

  LIKE. A distilled version of "In Defense of Food", this lists all of his rules in short chapters & skips much of the background/technical reading. If you've already got "In Defense of Food", you'll find this one largely redundant.

• In Defense of Food
  Michael Pollan

  LOVE. A great read about Michael's opinion on how we should be eating today, and a look at why we are eating so badly. It will make you want to run out and eat some organic leafy vegetables immediately.

• Stiff
  Mary Roach

  LOVE. A fun read about the history of human cadavers and their use in medical research, including the history of what happens to humans after they die (compost, cremation, burial, etc). Learnt a lot of fun facts from this.

• Good Calories, Bad Calories
  Gary Taubes

  LIKE. This is Gary's first book on obesity & nutrition research, and is very heavy on the science/research details. It talks a lot about the bad science that got us to where we are today, and in the end it talks about the carbohydrate hypothesis. It's good if you're patient, but if not, go for "Why We Get Fat", which distills the information down to a much easier read.