The Olive Farm

by Carol Drinkwater

An English actress impulsively buys a run-down olive farm in southern France (Provence) with her French husband. She writes about the joys and the trials and tribulations of fixing it up. It is so well written She writes about all the sights and sounds in such a rich and descriptive fashion. I sure wish I could write this way. (I have tried and find it extraordinarily difficult.) One of my new favorite books since I too have tried to live in France.

Galileo's Mistake

A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church

by Wade Roland

A very fine book with excellent research. I enjoyed much of what he said (outside of his research.) However, there are a few things that I don’t agree with - mainly that he is a bit too much of a Catholic Church apologist. He assumes too much purity in the Vatican hierarchy.

Here is an excellent interview with the author. (Good interviewer)

http://www.galileosmistake.com/media/interview-galileo-ciut.html

The Year 1000

What Life Was Like At The Turn of The First Millennium

by Robert Lacey and Danny Danzinger

Great little book about the what daily life was like then in England. Would NOT want to live there myself.

Sun-day
Moon-day
Tiw's-day - Norse god of war
Woden's-day -Germanic god
Thor's-day - Thunor (Norse) god of thunder
Frig-day - Norse goddess of growing things and fertility
Saturn-day - Roman god of agriculture and fertility

Visions of Mars

by Olivier de Goursac

Incredibly beautiful book with wonderfully detailed and colorful pictures of Mars. Wow.

Beautiful Loot

by Akinsha and Kozlov

It's a book about how the Nazis took fine art works from individuals and museums from the countries they invaded including Russia, then the Soviets looted the artworks that the Germans possessed (their own and otherwise) at the end of the war. The book tries to find out where these artworks went and have been stored since then.

My Father's Daughter

by Tina Sinatra

Is it about Frank? Yes.

Does anybody I know care? No.

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

By Richard Feynmann

It's a autobiographical book by Feynmann who was one of the scientists that worked on the original atomic bomb (later pushing humanistic science.) A lot of the book was his investigation - he was one of a 12 person investigation team - into the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster. I liked the investigation part, not so much his short stories about his life in the first part of the book.

House of Sand and Fog - fiction

by Andre Bubois III

Pretty much a good book though I didn't like the basic lack of motivation by the main character. I had just seen the movie so I wanted to read the book. The book better explains the motivations and the reasons for the characters actions.