Changes to the Current Reading List

I need to make updates almost constantly in order to keep my blog current and interesting. Today, for example, I updated the Current Reading List in the sidebar. I had read Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies some time ago, and I had posted my review of the book. So it was time for Dick to go. The books by Tom Ricks, Douglas Feith, Jane Mayer, and Gardner and Birley will stay up until I've written and posted reviews of them. I added Richard Russo's novel Empire Falls to the list. I don't know if anyone else remembers the Paul Newman movie Nobody's Fool, but it was based on an earlier novel by Russo.

I also added a book that has appeared on the Foreign Affairs Bestsellers list: Amy Chua's World on Fire. I've just started the book, but I will say that I am finding it very interesting. The author has a very provocative thesis. "In the numerous countries around the world that have pervasive poverty and a market-dominant minority, democracy and markets - at least in the form in which they are currently being promoted - can proceed only in deep tension with each other."

I have also added, somewhat belatedly, The NIV Study Bible. I started reading the Bible in November of 2007 on a program that took me through the entire book by the end of October 2008. I stayed with that program through the end of 2008. In 2009 I am following two Bible-reading programs. The first program takes me through the Bible in one year, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. The other program takes me through the New Testament in two years, spending a week on each group of two or three chapters.

Anyway, check out the Current Reading List, take a look at the recommended reading lists from Foreign Affairs and The Economist I have posted here, and find something good to read.