What I have been reading lately.

For my last birthday, 6 December 2011, my wife Ann gave me a Kobo e-reader. It has radically changed my reading habits. Previously, I rarely read a book that I did not own—and, when I could not afford to buy new books, I re-read the old ones. However, the Internet, through my Kobo connection, has opened up an entirely new world of reading. Below is a list of the books that I have read in the past 7 months. Only one of them is fiction. Most of them I downloaded for free.  Many of them are outstanding books that I highly recommend; the others are all worth the read.

Some day, when I am brave enough, I will tackle Plato’s “The Republic” and Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (both available for free).

Though there are many such sites, the ones that have the most books that I am interested in available at no charge are the University of Chicago Press and the Gutenberg Project.

Collections of Nothing; William Davis King; University of Chicago Press; 2008.

French Lessons, A Memoir; Alice Kaplan; University of Chicago Press; 1993.

Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela ; Conrad Rudolph; University of Chicago Press;  2004.

A Planet of Viruses; Carl Zimmer; University of Chicago Press; 2011.

The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-Free Framework for Understanding the Universe; Scott M. Tyson; Galaxia Way; 2011.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. James Gleik; Pantheon Books; 2011.

The Worst Journey in the World; Apsley Cherry-Garrad; Duke Classics; Carroll & Graft Publishers; 2003 (originally published by Constable; 1922)

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover The Deepest Places On Earth; James M. Tabor; Random House; 2010.

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness; Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner;  Oxford University Press; 2006.

In One Person; John Irving; Alfred A. Knopf Publishing; 2012,

The Grand Design; Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow; Bantam Books; 2010.

God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine ; Victoria Sweet; Riverhead Books; 2012.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Stephen Greenblatt; W. W. Norton & Company; 2011.

A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing; Lawrence M. Krauss; Simon & Schuster, Inc.; 2012.

Illegal Harmonies: Music in the Modern Age; Andrew Ford; Black Inc.; 1997.

Life in the Backwoods; Susanna Moodie; Gutenberg Project; 2006 (Orignally published: 1852).

The Mysteries of Montreal: Being Recollections of a Female Physician;  Charlotte Fuhrer; Gutenberg Project;   (Originally published 1881)

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival; John Vaillant; Alfred A. Knopf;  2010.

A History of the World in 100 Objects; Neil MacGregor; Penguin;  2010.

Heart of Darkness; Joseph Conrad; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1902).

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest trail; Cheryl Strayed; Alfred A. Knopf; 2012.

The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; Thomas Jefferson; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1776).

The Communist Manifesto; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Gutenberg Project   (Originally published 1888).

Prufrock and Other Observations; T. S. Eliot; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1920).