Apparently all I do is Read

But if that's what you're interested in, you're in luck!  Here's the latest batch:

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Louis Zamperini was one of the best middle distance runners in the country and just at the start of a very promising track career (in a time when track was a much more popular sport) when WWII broke out.  Off to war he went, like so many others.  His plane was shot down over the Pacific, and he spent weeks at sea in his little raft nearly starving to death, only to eventually wash up on a Japanese held island and spend years in terrible POW camps.  It's a riveting story of a very terrible life.  From the beginning of the book, and the title, it's pretty obvious that he survives all of this, but even knowing that, it was still almost unbelievable that he did.  You should read this book.  There is also a movie, which I haven't seen.

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton
Someone really did steal a few hundred pounds of gold from a train in England in 1855, which inspired Michael Crichton to write a book which should not be mistaken for a work of non-fiction.  I read this a few decades ago, and though it was good, but not great.  I picked it up again, curious if I would like it better as an adult.  It's still good, but still not great.  There is also a movie, which I haven't seen.

The Big Year by Mark Obmascik
I like to look at birds and figure out what species they are.  But not like these people.  This is the story of 3 very different people who go on a "big year", which is a quest to find as many different species of bird in the US and Canada.  They head off to Alaskan islands, mountain tops, the gulf coast and everywhere in between in search of birds.  The book is fairly short and entertaining, and a whole lot less work than finding 700 species of birds yourself.  (A lot cheaper, too.)  There is also a movie, which I have seen, and which was pretty entertaining.  The book is factual, the movie is adapted from the book to make it into a better movie.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
The tale of the 1936 US Olympic 8 man rowing team.  How do you go from a poor kid in Washington to an Olympic gold medalist?  Well, this book tells you how.  (Also, that's not a spoiler, because just about from page 1 you know they win.)  This was fairly engaging book, though I'm not really sure how to write up a brief description of it that will make it sound good.  It's about college students rowing a boat.  There is no movie, to my knowledge. 

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
This is the second time I've read this book, which was still excellent.  Nate Silver is known for developing player prediction systems for baseball players, projecting election results and running fivethirtyeight.com.  This book is about making predictions, specifically how to make good ones and how to understand their results.  He looks at different attempts to make predictions on things from weather to sports to earthquakes to global warming and analyses why we are good at predicting some things, but bad at other things.  More than being about the specific predictions, this book is about the process of making the predictions and how to do a better job.  I find it very interesting.

Superfreakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt
The followup to Freakonomics.  These guys have a podcast that is pretty good, and which steals material from their books (or vice versa).  Basically, they like to investigate data about everything from health care to terrorist banking habits, to car seat safety to prostitution.  It's interesting, quick to read, and basically a collection of lots of interesting results of studies that examine why people act they way they do.

There you go.  Now let me get back to my reading . . .