ktruh's 888 challenge

I'm getting a late start for 2008, but here goes.

Science
1. How the Earthquake Bird Got Its Name by H.H. Shugart (finished)
2. Mathematician at the Ballpark by Ken Ross (also in Outdoors/Sports) (finished)
3. Voice of the Infinite in the Small by Joanne Elizabeth Lauck
4. Napoleon's Buttons by Penny LeCouteur
5. Life at the Extremes by Frances Ashcroft
6. Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson (finished)
7. Joy of Physics by Arthur Wiggins (finished)
8. Elegant Universe by Brian Green (finished)

Edited to add "finished" notation

Outdoors/Sports
1. High Adventure by Edumund Hillary (finished)
2. All Elevations Unknown by Sam Lightner
3. Hell or High Water by Peter Heller
4. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (finished)
5. Perfect: Inside Story of Baseball's Perfect Games by James Buckley Jr.
6. Racing the Antelope by Bernd Heinrich (finished)
7. Mathematician at the Ballpark by Ken Ross (also in Science) (finished)
8. Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook by Stephen Lord (also in Travel) (finished)

Edited to add "finished" notation

Issues
1. Memo to the President Elect by Madeleine Albright
2. World Without Us by Alan Weisman
3. Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Phillip Ball (finished)
4. Checkbook and the Cruise Missile by Arundhati Roy
5. Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford (finished)
6. What Next by Walter Mosley (finished)
7. Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid
8. Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense by Normand Baillargeon (finished)

Edited to add "finished" notation

Next in Favorite Series
1. Rude Mechanicals by Kage Baker (finished)
2. Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis (finished)
3. Ottoman Cage by Barbara Nadel
4. Limehouse Text by Will Thomas (finished)
5. Days of Atonement by Michael Gregorio
6. Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin (finished)
7. Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman (finished)
8. People Who Walk in Darkness by Stuart Kaminsky (finished)

Edited to add "finished" notation

Travel
1. Without a Guide by Katherine Govier (finished)
2. Where the Birds Are by John Oliver Jones
3 Kindness of Strangers by Tim Cahill, et.al.
4. Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists by Tony Perrottet
5. Lonely Planet Blue List:2008 (finished)
6. 100 Places Every Woman Should Go by Stephanie Elizondo Griest (finished)
7. Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski
8. Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook by Stephen Lord (finished)

Edited to add "finished" notation

History
1. Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World by Vicki Leon (finished)
2. Year 1000 by Robert Lacey (finished)
3. After the Ice by Steven Mithen
4. Riddle of the Compass by Amir Aczel
5. Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz
6. Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester
7. Lost History: Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists by Michael Morgan
8. TBD

Strange Fiction
1. Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due (finished)
2. Fluke: Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore (fiinished)
3. Frisco Pigeon Mambo by C.D. Payne (finished)
4. Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem (finished)
5. Brightonomicon by Robert Rankin (finished)
6. Conjurer's Bird by Martin Davies
7. Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (finished)
8. Plot to Save Socrates by Paul Levinson (finished)

Edited to add "finished" notation

Poetry
1. Life Around Us by Denise Levertov (finished)
2. Lay Back the Darkness by Edward Hirsch
3. Pleasure Dome by Yusef Komunyakaa
4. Bounty by Derek Walcott (finished)
5. Wind Shifts by Juan Felipe Herrera
6. Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton
7. Combinations of the Universe by Albert Goldbarth (finished)
8. Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford (finished)

Welcome to the challenge. You have an interesting list with some titles I don't remember seeing before.

Thanks, hailelib. Some titles are pretty old and have been on my TBR list for a long time.

I finished books from science, issues, and strange fiction categories. Strange fiction includes some science fiction, some magical realism, some just off-the-wall books.

Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem. I like Lethem and probably like this book the least of others I have read. There wasn't a lot of complexity.

Joy of Physics by Arthur Wiggins. This book is like a physics textbook lite, good for a reader like me who likes to read and think about physics but doesn't have the capacity for understanding the concepts as a real physicist must. The explanations about different forces, fields, and particles are clear and demonstrated with little experiments the author calls "experimentinos" that readers can do pretty easily. Short entertaining biographies about some of the giants are included.

A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense by Baillargeon (surprised there's no Touchstone for this). The subtitle is "Find your inner Chomsky" and covers some of the same kind of material Chomsky has in books such as Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Chomsky. The author covers ways spin and jargon used by the media, the government, and corporations try to mold our thinking and describes logical approaches to to see through them. This book was very readable, and although I probably didn't learn anything new, I did get good reminders on being a skeptic.

I finished Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin. The second part of the book was told from the point of view of the antagonist, and while it was well done, I missed being in Erast Fandorin's pov. Not my favorite in the series.

Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Life by Bernd Heinrich (no touchstone) was excellent. Heinrich is a biologist who decided at the age of 41 to run ultramarathons (100 k!). The book weaves together some interesting autobiography, his race preparation, and animal and human physiology. In preparing for the race, he looked at different animals and how their food, behavior, etc. could help him in his long-distance running efforts. The most interesting parts for me were those in which he described how animals adapted, how what they eat fuels the kinds of activities they do, and how humans are similar or different. While the book is a great read for runners and naturalists, Heinrich's lyrical writing can be enjoyed by anyone.

Brightonomicon by Robert Rankin was a fun read. I love Rankin's books--well, not one right after the other, maybe. He's a great fit for the "strange fiction" category as he labels his work "far-fetched fiction."

Critical Mass, written by physicist Phillip Ball, addresses how physics concepts can help us understand society, particularly emerging behaviors. For example, Ball looks at how biological structures and snowflakes form and how what we know about that formation can inform us about how cities and other groups are organized. My favorite chapter dealt with traffic models, and how the free flow of traffic turns into a jam. The book is dense, as it combines science history, science, and the history, organization, and philosophy of human (and sometimes animal) societies.

I finished Without a Guide: Contemporary Women's Travel Adventures last night. Some of the authors of the essays in this book are Alice Walker, Ann Beattie, Clare Boylan, Margaret Atwood, and Bapsi Sidhwa. The two essays that stood out for me were the opening one by Hanan al-Shaykh about Cairo and the one by Robyn Davidson, which was a short condensation of From Alice to Ocean: Alone across the Outback, which I have added to my TBR stack.

In Poetry, I just finished Life Around Us by Denise Levertov. I love Levertov. This is a slim volume of selected poems on nature. I've been on a quest to find the poem about the sea turtle saving the woman from drowning (can't remember the title), so I will be reading more Levertov until I find it.

In my history category, I just finished The Year 1000: what life was like at the turn of the first millennium: an Englishman's World by Lacey. This was more a time capsule than a tome, so it was easy to read and did a good job bringing the year 1000 to life. The framework is a month-per-chapter look at "The Julius Work Calendar," one of the few works that survived the purges of the monasteries by Henry VIII. I don't think this book has the depth to satisfy a serious historian, but it was fun and made me want to find more books about the era, which is a good recommendation.

(edited to correct typo)

I read either this book or something very similar several years ago when a lot of books like this were being published. I remember enjoying the book and the window on a different world.

hailelib,
That should tell you how far behind in my TBR pile!

High Adventure by Edmund Hillary (Outdoors and Sports) was wonderful. I've read a lot of Everest and climbing books, but never got around to this seminal work until now, although I have read Tiger of the Snows by Tenzing Norgay. Hillary has described the Himalayan landscape and the trek to the top of Everest in a way that makes it come alive. Tenzing also was a wonderful narrator and told the story with a Buddhist's respect for the mountain. I tend to think more highly of Tenzing's attitude than the more competitive attitude held by Hillary (and many, many other climbers), but Hillary also loved mountaineering and the beauty of the high mountains.

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon--I really loved Yiddish Policeman's Union, but found Gentlemen to be more a series of adventures rather than a cohesive novel, which is fine but not what I expected. I hope to see more like Yiddish Policemen.

My son-in-law had the same reaction to Gentlemen of the Road. Kavalier and Clay is one of his favorite books, so he was disappointed.

He's passed Gentleman on to me & it's been sitting in my ever-growing TBR pile for a couple of months, but with the lukewarm reactions I keep hearing, it's not getting moved up very fast.

I'm so far behind, I won't make it unless I really step it up. I have been reading a lot of books that are not on my lists. Here are the ones that are.

Mathematician at the Ballpark was heavier on the math than I wanted, but it was still fun. I enjoyed finding out in a general way how statistics were figured and which ones counted, but I didn't spend a lot of time on the formulas. Still, this was very interesting for a baseball fan.

Elegant Universe--The universe isn't all that's elegant. This book was beautifully written for the lay physicist (very lay, in my case). The explanations were some of the best I've read.

I love Kage Baker. Rude Mechanicals was a little apart from the series and seemed to be more a young adult book, but I could read the Company series through infinity. I have one left in the series, and I dread finishing.

Limehouse Text was fun to read. This is one of my favorite historical mystery series.

Working IX to V was a wonderful catalog of professions in the ancient world, mainly in the Roman and Greek periods. It was a humorous rather than a weighty look, but Leon did her research reading classical texts. Leon is the author of the Uppity Women series.

Combinations of the Universe was my introduction to Goldbarth, whom I now love.

I hope to post more in a much shorter time.

Bounty by Derek Walcott is beautiful in the way the Caribbean contrasts to other climes. Walcott can make the difference so startling. He's also great at taking control of the imagination and building a feeling or concept brick by brick with each line. I like a bigness to poetry, more than too-self-conscious poetry, and Walcott delivers this.

Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford is timely even though parts of it were written during or shortly after WWII. Stafford spent the war in a camp for conscientious objectors, and some of his writing about that experience is included. There is also a section of poetry. I love the "Ground Zero" poems that convey moments when the worst has not yet happened. A large section of the book includes notes--aphorisms, ideas for poems, etc.--that he made when he got up every morning at 4:00 to think and write. These are very appropriate to our times:

"Those who champion democracy, but also make a fetish of never accepting anything they don't agree with--what advantage do they see in democracy?"

"One trouble about language is that people sometimes believe what you say, and you were only trying it out."

"Being wrong is easy. How to be when wrong is harder."

The Plot to Save Socrates by Paul Levinson is under "Strange Fiction" but really isn't strange enough to fit the category. It's standard time travel sf. There's some playing around with the notion of paradox and Socratic dialogue.

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson was truly an exciting read. The movie is based on the book, and I think Simpson was not only an advisor but an actual participant in the movie. I haven't seen it but will. The writing, once Joe and Simon got onto the mountain, was strong, evocative, and thrilling in the pace and description of the ordeal.

Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook by Stephen Lord (Touchstone isn't working) describes cycling routes around the world, including much about the culture and details that a traveler my face off the beaten path. I may have a chance to ride a couple of the routes, but the writing was great armchair travel in addition to being a great guidebook.

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson was great fun. Judson is an evolutionary biologist and journalist. Her alter-ego Dr. Tatiana dishes out sex advice on the weirdness of animal's sex and mating habits and discusses how things came to be the way they are.

I will check back later to see if I can get the Touchstones to work.

Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher is great fun, as was every book by him I have read. I won't include any spoilers, but all the book reviews you will see tell you that a hapless marine biologist studying whale soundings sees a whale with "Bite Me" written on its fluke.

100 Places Every Woman Should Go by Stephanie Elizondo Griest left me wanting to go to all 100 places (except maybe the places where Mary has been sighted). Places were chosen for their friendliness to women, their importance in women's history, their plain good visibility, and other good reasons. It's fun to read guide books that take you to some less visited places, and this one does, although, it also includes some lesser known sites in some well-visited places.

Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis was another winner with Marcus Didius Falco chasing mysteries during the heydey of the Roman Empire.

How the Earthquake Bird got its Name by HH Shugart was a collection of essays was about ecological balance and some of the ways we screw it up. One of the most interesting essays concerned how many animals and birds need very specialized habitats, so it's not enough to reserve and expanse of land for them. The essay discussed a few species that need specialized habitats--much more interesting than my dry accounting here makes it seem. Each essay covered a few animals and how humans have interacted with them, pretty often to the detriment of the animals.

Last Secret of the Temple by Sussman turns out not to be a part of a series, so really didn't fit in the category (Next in Favorite Series). Still, it was fun. It should appeal to Da Vinci Code fans.

People Who Walk in Darkness by Kaminsky is the latest in the Rostnikov series. I love this series and the Arkady Renko series (Gorky Park).

Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due was a treasure. The plot follows a modern-day pop musician who is haunted by Scott Joplin's ghost. The fiction was fine, but the biographical information on Joplin and the history of ragtime was great. Now I want to read more on them.

Frisco Pigeon Mambo by CD Payne is about a group of lab pigeons who have been freed by animal rights activists. The unreliable narrator, one of the tobacco- and sherry-addicted pigeons, is great.

Lonely Planet Blue List 2008 gave me ideas for a lot of places I would love to go. The 2008 edition included a section on the Islamic world.

What Next by Walter Mosley is a short book (long essay) on peace and our duties regarding oppression. I love Mosley's fiction, and his eloquence is effective in this book.