The Goat Rope book shelf: random items

I'm winding up Slacker Week by looking back at the year in reading. Here are some that I found to be diverting this year...

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson based on research by John Sergeant. I liked the movie, but the book was way more diverting--and weirder, especially since it's a work of nonfiction.

I also did some interesting reading about disasters and how people respond to them, including Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why and Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.

On a social science note, I enjoyed Len Fisher's Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, a book which I borrowed from a friend and probably haven't returned. Also enlightening was The Invisible Gorilla: and Other Ways our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

I could go on, but if I do, my employers will realize what I slacker I am all year round. Good reading in 2011!