Second And Park — Web Copy That Works by Tiffani Jones

I try to pick out my most recent favorite books every six months or so. Here are some.

The Best of Creative Nonfiction: Vol 3, edited by Lee Gutkind

Short, memoir-inspired essays about life. Check out “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho” by Wesley Yang, “An Insider’s Guide to Jailhouse Cuisine: Dining In” by Sean Rowe, “What Comes Out” by Dawnelle Wilkie and “Community College” by Tim Bascom. Bring a Kleenex.

Corpus Christi: Stories, by Bret Anthony Johnston

Only halfway through, but I have a soft spot for morose-but-revealing-and-hopeful short stories about love and loss. Check out “Anything That Floats” on Bret’s blog, too.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs

If Margaret Mead, Steven Levitt, and Miss Manners had a baby, it might have written like Jane Jacobs: intelligent, just artsy enough, frank, polite and pragmatic. Learn the uses of sidewalks, why neighborhood parks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and how unslumming and slumming happen.

Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, by Yamamato Tsunetomo

A book of anecdotes and samurai wisdom that I remembered after watching Ghostdog again. You’ll have to overlook the extreme violence and disturbing sexism (it was written pre-1700!).

The Help, by Kathyrn Stockett

Fiction, about a ambitious young writer from Jackson, Mississippi who wants to help black maids in town tell their stories. A compassionate and nuanced—if not a little romanticized—look at race relations and growing up in the civil rights-era South. Written by a super blonde southern lady who knows how to tell a story.

A Little History of the World, by EH Gombrich

I’ve already written about this one, but I can’t say enough about it. Read it if you want to actually remember the history of the world.

The Sleepwalkers: a History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe, by Arthur Koestler

A brainy, epic journey through the history of ideas about religion, cosmology, and science. Like Gombrich, Koestler is excited. He inserts his opinion, too, which is wonderful (check his dis on Plato, page 59). This book is carrot juice and bran muffins, though, so take it easy.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker

Been reading this one for a while. It’s another carrot juice and bran muffins book. Actually, carrot-ginger-beet-juice and wheat germ salad book. It’s a lot to digest, but digest you must. Pinker describes how words and minds work together. How every time we speak, we reveal something fundamental about how we think.