Welcome to Gaia! ::

Just curious to see what people are reading, looking for suggestions for books to pick up. I'm currently reading The Tending Instinct by Shelley E. Taylor and I just picked up a copy of Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. (Which I have been dying to read.)

Taylor's book is about the difference in male and female's response to stress and the effect of stress on bio/psycho/social systems. It is really interesting. Traditionally, it has been held that 'fight or flight' are the typical responses to stress. However, Taylor shows that the research performed for these experiments were done almost entirely on male animal model and human systems. She suggests that women respond to stress in a different manner, which she calls 'tend and befriend' - because it is not practical to run off while carrying or leaving behind a two year old. One of the examples she provides is that when men have a bad day, they tend to become gruff and isolate themselves while women tend to talk and touch more. I just find this to be fascinating.

Harry Potter? (oh, just shoot me now...)

Scientific books, I'm reading Genome by Matt Ridle. It's pretty good. Goes into a wide range of things, covers a lot but in a quite accesable way (I think). I liked the other book of his which I've read more, though, the Red Queen Hypothesis. Loved this.

I'm currently working my way (slowly) through Mark C. Danielewski's House of Leaves and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The Selfish Gene is pretty good too, got to read that one for a class, actually. ^_^

I like "Geisha" by Arthur Golden, as well as the "Battle Royale" novel.
I'm also reading through the "Slayers" novel series, which inspired the anime. Interesting writing style and comical sense.

And I keep re-reading through "A brief history of time", though the book is better when read in bits and pieces.

Sexual selection, basically. Going into a lot of detail and using the red queen hypothesis to explain some human traits such as our big brain. He looks at human sexual dimporphism in terms of phychology too which I thought was interesting.

Recently, I picked up The Cartoon Guide to Chemisty, by Gonick and Criddle. Good read. Plenty of solid info with illustrations and bad puns to both keep interest and make a few things easier to understand. Lots of practical information, too.

Other than that, I adore the Magic: The Gathering books.

Right now I'm re-reading a couple of Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell novels. I'm also currently reading Explorations in Criminal Psychopathology:Clinical Syndromes with Forensic Implications. Quite interesting, actually.

I'm reading this one right now. I'm only a few pages in, though.