what i'm reading (late october)

Sometimes students ask me what I'm reading.  For the last few years it's mostly been nonfiction; there are so many things I want to understand about the world.  Apart from what I find on my own, I love it when a person I respect recommends a book about something I think I already understand.  This challenges me to keep an open mind; when I start reading I consider a familiar topic from a completely new perspective.  That's the case with The Oxygen Advantage.  It's a book about how breathing more effectively can help with everything from stress to performance to weight loss.  I'm only a couple chapters in, and I haven't yet cross-referenced the research (which I will, because (a) I'm a curious geek, and (b) I'm not about to take one stranger's word about something as important as breathing), but so far the ideas are consistent with what I remember from biology and I'm already seeing positive results from the few practices I have tested for myself.  This isn't an endorsement yet, but the book is definitely thought-provoking.

This past weekend I did pick up a novel, and the action moved so quickly that I plowed through it in a few hours.  Zero Sum Game was perfect timing: my daughter's in fifth grade, and already she's had three teachers in a row who have basically done everything they can to make math less interesting, so she's not as excited about it as she used to be, which is a damn shame.  I was thinking about this a couple weeks ago when I read a review of a book written by a young woman about a protagonist -- also a young woman -- who is an assassin with mad skills, including an insanely keen grasp of math that allows her to think and do things that you and I can't.  Add an international plot, mind control, logic, and lots of suspense and explosions in LA and the surrounding desert, and I was hooked.  It's nowhere near age appropriate for my kiddo, but I'll save it for her just in case. :)

*If you follow the links for the book titles, you'll notice they lead to Powell's instead of Amazon.  This is because Powell's is one of the world's greatest independent bookstores (which you can visit in Portland, OR) and I want to support them instead of an industry-eating, ICE-supporting monopoly.  In this society and economy it's important to support the businesses you believe in.