Reading List

I've been reading A LOT lately. Maybe that shouldn't be notable, given that I am a book editor and live in a house with so many books that they have overflowed the bookshelves and are stacked on dressers, chairs, and the floor. But for whatever reason, I feel like my rate of pleasure-reading has increased quite a bit lately. I credit that partially to joining Bookswim about a year ago. It's the "Netflix for books" and I know I try to get through things quickly in order to get my money's worth from the membership! Also, since I'm doing better about reading the things I buy, and not just letting them sit on my nightstand forever and ever, I'm more willing to buy new books (but only if Bookswim doesn't have them--I'd still rather rent than buy). I love to end each day by reading in bed for a while before turning out the light.

This week, five new books have arrived in the mail (three bought through Amazon, and two from Bookswim):

America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It
Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions
Parenting, Inc.: How the Billion-Dollar Baby Business Has Changed the Way We Raise Our Children
The Lovely Bones

As you see, my tastes include biography, sociology, religion, parenting, and murder-mystery (I wrote a whole post a while back about the guilty pleasure I find in memoirs of tragedy--at least The Lovely Bones is fiction). Other things I've read recently include:

Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy
For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice
Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests
Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope
My Sister's Keeper: A Novel
The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats

The books I've read lately for work won't be published for a while, but just to give you a sneak preview:
There's a mother's devotional by Kristen Welch of We Are THAT Family (I LOVE it and hope you will too, come March 2011!)
There is Dan Collison's Church in Translation: Vibrant Christianity in Your Time and Place, about making ten essentials of the faith accessible to today's cultural context.
And, there are some studies based on Mike Slaughter's Change the World--one for small groups, and one for leadership teams, plus a devotional book. Awesome.

What have you been reading lately?