HAF Book Club: July book poll

[Sandra Craft]

I'm doing this early because I'm bored.  I'm also going to do the polls a little different in July and August -- since we have nearly equal numbers of fiction and non-fiction books, I'm splitting them into alternate months.  I think this will make choosing 3 a little easier; in any case, we'll see how it goes for 2 months.

Also, I've decided not to cull any books.  If a book doesn't get any votes for 3 months straight I'll put it on a stand-by list and it'll show up again when we start getting low on books.  Remember that everyone gets to suggest 5 books so if one of yours gets picked, feel free to suggest another one.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, by Frans de Waal
What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future—all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet's preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Inspired by James Baldwin's 1963 classic The Fire Next Time, Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book, Between the World and Me, is a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today...[a] powerful and passionate book...  [written as a letter from father to son]

Confessions of a Barbarian, by Edward Abbey
Ending with an entry written 12 days before his 1989 death at age 60, the diaries of the late environmentalist and novelist (The Monkeywrench Gang) are adolescent in spirit, with all the virtues and vices that word implies. Abbey is capable of startling self-righteousness; his fulminations against writers he considers second-rate seem to be motivated as much by jealousy as by genuine bewilderment at his rivals' success. Yet such moments are cut with welcome self-mockery: He calls himself ``E. Abbey, famous unknown author.'' Though he traveled over the world, he finds his spiritual home in the American Southwest, and some of his most moving writing here pays lush homage to the austere landscape or lashes out at those poised to destroy it. Abbey the lover is as vocal as the moralist: exuberantly priapic tributes to one woman after another fill these pages.

Crazy From the Heat, by David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth recounts with trademark showmanship and canny self-awareness the antics of the feverishly bacchanalian entertainment world. In the same gleefully honest and delightfully discursive voice his many fans have come to relish, Roth gives readers a backstage pass to his long strange trip from obscurity to rock stardom, his ups and downs with the Van Halens, and much more that will raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded music industry afficionado.

Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M. Hazen
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life's origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet.

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.  But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf
The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.

What Nietzsche Really Said, by Robert C. Solomon & Kathleen M. Higgins
Friedrich Nietzsche's aggressive independence, flamboyance, sarcasm, and celebration of strength have struck responsive chords in contemporary culture. More people than ever are reading and discussing his writings. But Nietzsche's ideas are often overshadowed by the myths and rumors that surround his sex life, his politics, and his sanity. In this lively and comprehensive analysis, Nietzsche scholars Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins get to the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy, from his ideas on "the will to power" to his attack on religion and morality and his infamous Übermensch (superman).

[Biggus Dickus]

I have cast my votes; also, I like the idea of splitting the fiction and non-fiction as I'm more drawn to fiction, and this will more or less force me to read more non-fiction.

I like the choices, and as always thanks ever so much for putting all of this together Sandy

[Sandra Craft]

OK, we have a tie (very exciting) and I'm throwing my tie-breaking vote for Hillbilly Elegy, by J. D. Vance.

[Claireliontamer]

Just ordered it from my library.

[Icarus]

I read that one several months ago. Enjoyed it thoroughly and appreciated its straight forward approach.