VL

Christopher McGovern - the Dragon Seekers

Christopher McGovern has written a book about the British fossil collectors before the Darwin's work with the Origin of the Species (which appeared around 150 years ago). They collected the fossil because of curiosity, because of scientific interest but also for profit. Scholars tried to use them as a proof of Biblical flood - and some of them retouched them to make them more presentable - and marketable.
( Fossil collectors before Darwin )

Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Queen of the South
( From a Sinaloa girl to a Spanish smuggling tycoon )

Pierre de Vomecourt - Who Lived to See the Day
( ”more )

Benjamin Woollet - The Queen's Conjurer

John Dee was an astrologer and occultist in the Elizabethan England. In his predictions he supported ideas like the British Empire and wanted to find the laws of nature by asking angels themselves.
( Serious research via crystal and a fraud )

Arturo Perez-Reverte- The Seville Communion

Arturo Perez-Reverte is Spanish author who has written various books (in the current publishing environment, his publisher would have forced him to stick to Captain Alatriste in the expense of everything else). But this story is placed in the modern day or, to be exact, relatively recent past.
( Magnificent book, magnificent tale )

---

( From paper owls to dharma dolls )

Steve Aylett - The Inflatable Volunteer

The back cover blurb is even more wrong in this case than in many others because it tries to give an impression that there is some semblance of a story between the covers of this book. If the whoever wrote it even read the book, he probably ended up going to a dog psychiatrist asking for herbal acupuncture.
( Amusing intentional incoherence )

Tony Hillerman - Seldom Disappointed

Tony Hillerman was best known for his stories about the Navajo tribal police (I'm still not sure whether to cell them whodunit, police procedurals or detective stories but they are still interesting). In this particular tome he tells about his own life leading to the writing of those books - and only a little about them after all.
( How the creator of Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn grew up )

Elizabeth Mavor - The Ladies of Llangollen

( Sapphic couple or just friends - take a guess )

Music meme via lady myntti

You can learn a lot about someone by the music they listen to. So here is the game! Hit shuffle on your ipod or mp3 player and write down the first 26 songs. No cheating or skipping songs that are shameful. That is the fun!

WinAmp will have to suffice...

1 Ennio Morricone - Sacco and Vancetti
2 Zebda - Toulouse
3 Alanis Morrissette - You Learn
4 Juice Leskinen - Norjalainen villapaita (Norwegian wool shirt)
5 MASH - Suicide is painless
6 Edelweiss - Spaceship Edelweiss
7 Sarah Brightman - Eden
8 Ramones - Per Sematary
9 Monty Python - Accountancy Shanty
10 Weird Al Yankovic - Germs
11 Hector - Mandoliinimies (The mandolin man)
12 Talking Heads - Wild Wild Life
13 Konami Yoshida - Please don't surrender (Magic Knight Rayearth theme)
14 Queen - Who dares to live forever
15 John Lennon - Imagine
16 Evanescence - Weight of the World
17 Enya - Caribbean Blue
18 Monty Python - Lumberjack Song (weatherman version)
19 Weird Al Yankovic - UHF
20 Billy Joel - All about soul
21 Patricia Kaas - Il me dit que je suis belle
22 Celine Dion - It's all coming back to me
23 Depeche Mode - Just can't get enough
24 Udo Lindenberg - Germans
25 KLF - Last train to transcentral
26 Pink Floyd - Learning to fly

( More papercraft )

Oliver Sacks - A leg to stand on

Oliver Sacks is a British-born neurologist who has written about his various cases; but in this particular book he tells about what happened after his accident in Norway in 1974 - and how his leg vanished…
( I can see my leg but where is it? )

Wade Davis - The Serpent and The Rainbow

Wade Davis is a Canadian-born ethnobotanist who went to Haiti to look for a zombi poison and became very familiar with the practitioners of Woudon. This book is also famous because it was used as a basis of a Hollywood movie (which I haven't seen).
( Botanist's immersion into woudon in Haiti )

Steven Pinker - How the Mind Works

( Digressing occasional diatribe about mental functioning )

Hilary Spurling - The Grand Therese

How Therese Daurignac, a country girl with pretension to glory, ended up running a prominent salon in Paris? With gall, apparently, she tricked number of people to give her what she had constantly dreamed of ever since she was a girl.
( Therese Humbert and the power of the positive thinking )

George Millar - Maquis

( British officer in the French Resistance )

Robert Greene - 48 Laws of Power

( No Them tactics? )

I actually borrowed this from lady aberrant1.

There's an exercise in Chris Baty's book No Plot, No Problem! where you make a list of things you like in stories. Then you make a list of things you hate in stories. He calls them Magna Carta 1 and 2. He recommends that you post them somewhere obvious, because it's surprisingly easy to find yourself writing things you don't even like to read, and forgetting all about the things you do like.

So, here are my Magna Carta 1 & 2:
( Positive side )
( Negative side )
C'mon, let's see your Magna Cartas.

Helen Fisher - Why We Love

Helen Fisher is an American anthropologist. I have not read anything else from her but this particular book is an exhaustive study of what makes the human heart throb for somebody else.
( Human animal is not the only one that loves )

Donald B. Smith - Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance: The Glorious Impostor
( Better to be treated as a redskin than a black man )