Genre brainstorming: People with lots of points and no wishlist hits

I'm taking up infiniteletters' suggestion for this thread, as there seem to be enough people who find it interesting.

My own general interests are: Cooking. Food (Michael Pollan is great). Science - biology, mathematics. Linguistics. Neurology, psychology - I love Oliver Sacks. Of all these subjects, also their history, sociology and philosophy. Informed combinations of these subjects.

I'm pretty sure I've got enough fiction, but if anyone's got suggestions about books that are unexpected and different, let me know. No mysteries, no murder, no romance, unless done in a completely original way.

I can read English, Dutch and simple German, and I like my books to be in the original language, if possible.

So, if anyone has interesting suggestions for the points burning a hole in my pocket, let me know on this thread. Or ask for your own suggestions.

My books will have to be sent international (or to an Angel).

Wester, I don't have copies to offer (I'm keeping a tight hold on mine), but your interests overlap enough with my interests, that I think that you might like books by Joe Schwarcz, such as "That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles" and "Let Them Eat Flax"; and Jay Ingram two examples are "The Barmaid's Brain" and "The Burning House : Unlocking the Mysteries of the Brain".

Both authors write books in the format of collections of short essays, written for the lay person. Joe Schwarcz's background is in food chemistry, so much (but not all) of his writing is on that topic. Jay Ingram's work tends to be more on psychology (and general science).

Edited to try to get the touchstones to work.

Gardening, but not the more modern 'how to'--I like to read musings about gardening. Books on orchids, though, of any variety.

History, autobiographies. I read mostly non-fiction, although I enjoy Erle Stanley Gardner's writing (and am working on collecting all his works).

I don't read science fiction or romances.

>3 MsMixte:

Have you read "The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession" by Susan Orlean?

I have indeed! It's generated quite a controversy within the AOS.

Oh, I should have mentioned that I also love books on jewelry.

If anyone should happen to have any books on Tristan da Cunha which I don't already have, please let me know!

I'm into books in the following areas:

Catholicism {vintage is great!} both for adults and children. Textbooks okay too.
Home schooling - right now I'm looking for things on how-to lesson plan, etc.
Children's Classics - Think Thornton Burgess, H.A. Rey, Milicent Selsam, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Zolotow, etc
Fiction similar in style to Beverly Lewis - I like Amish fiction and tolerate the christian part of hers as they are well written.
Cooking - right now it's slow-cooker I'm into, but it does change. My mom collects vintage regional cookbooks so we have pretty eclectic tastes.

Wester: Have you read The Brain that Changes itself yet? Reading through mine, I think you would like it.

#1 Wester, Have you read the Mary Roach books?

For Biology, Stephen Jay Gould? Several books of readable essays on evolution and the nature of life. Excellent

I know you wanted non-fiction, but there is a SF series by Suzette Haden-Elgin who is a linguist. It's about a society who's women are opressed, who develop a secret language that gradually changes the culture. Starts with Native Tongue. It's very well written and intelligent, without any aliens etc.
She has written many non-fiction books as well.

Kasey

Touchstones are being really uncooperative! The Native Tongue one will go to the wrong book and I can't get it changed.

Such thoughtful suggestions! Thank you!

Suzette Haden-Elgin actually was the cause of me joining BookMooch. I had read The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-defense before and wanted to get a copy for myself. Then when I joined LibraryThing I saw that a copy of it was available on BookMooch. I added 20 books to my inventory, tried to mooch, and then found they wouldn't send to my country. Within a month I had managed to Angel it, so I got introduced to that part soon as well. I've added Native Tongue to my wishlist, it looks good.

The brain that changes itself is already on my wishlist, I have looked at Mary Roach before, and I've got two books by Stephen Jay Gould on my TBR - I'll have to read one of them at least before I put him back on my wishlist.

Wester, try Raising the Dead by Richard Selzer. It's a memoir of his time in a coma. Extremely thought provoking.

MrsMixte: Try The Transplanted Gardener by Charles Elliott

>11 infiniteletters:

Thank you for the recommendation! I have not yet come across that one, so I will see if I can pick it up.

>6 dakotamidnight: dakota have you considered or read the Anne of Green Gables series? Some what along the same lines of The Little House books but set in Prince Edward Island (so amazingly beautiful) and about a young girl adopted by an older couple and her misadventures. There are many books in the series and they are widely available in Canada so a number of members could probably pick up the entire series for you.
~ Missy

13:

Oh yes - my mother read those to me as a young child in Upper Michigan.

I do however need to pick up the series for my daughter in the next few years or so - she is just a bit young for it now.

wester - I was planning to recommend Toast by Nigel Slater, but I looked and you already have it. But I didn't find Garlic and Sapphires or Katish Our Russian Cook on your list. Unfortunately I haven't read the latter two, but found them via good reviews on LT. And alas, I don't have copies to mooch for you.

>15 pbadeer:

I agree with pbadeer, since you're into food, wester, I think you'd like "Garlic and Sapphires", and maybe the others by Ruth Reichl; "Tender at the Bone" and "Comfort Me With Apples" (if you haven't already read them). After reading these at the public library, I got my own copies, which means that they met my criteria of books that I enjoyed enough to want to re-read.

Edited to fix the touchstones.

I agree about the Ruth Reichl books being re-reads. They are wonderful books. Discovering her books was a very happy benefit to being an angel, as I angelled a couple and was invited to read them first. I enjoyed Tender at the Bone so much that I recently acquired a copy of my own, which my husband is now enjoying. She has a new one coming out about her mother, and I'm looking forward to reading that.

For food writers, you can't beat M.F.K. Fisher - I have read all of her books and enjoyed them all, and Laurie Colwin. I also recommend Clementine in The Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain, and Novella Carpenter's Farm City.

Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is also very good.

Wester, have you tried VS Ramachandran? I can highly recommend Phantoms in the Brain and The Emerging Mind – he's a bit like a more intense version of Oliver Sacks. More science, less pop-science, if that makes sense.

#1: I thought I would suggest some books in those areas that I have actually gotten from BookMooch:

Secret Life of Lobsters
Dragon Hunter (related to biology/paleontology)
Gorgon (also paleontology)
ABC of French Food
Travels in an Old Tongue (kind of linguistics, but not that scientific)
E is for Eating: An Alphabet of Greed
French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew
The Dinosaur Heresies
Mutants
Lavoisier in the Year One
Caramel Knowledge
The Nasty Bits
I Have Landed
Hexaflagons and Other Mathematical Diversions
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
From Lucy to Language
An Anthropologist on Mars
Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus
Lives of a Cell
Innumeracy
The Double Helix

#3: Same thing for your topics:

The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
Elizabeth and Essex
The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon
The Sun King
Promises to Keep: African-Americans and the Constitutional Order
The Devil of Great Island
The Buffalo Creek Disaster
In Nixon's Web
Judge Sewall's Apology
Kings and Queens of England
Stonehenge
Woodrow Wilson (Penguin Lives)
The Secret Man
Country of My Skull
Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain

And a couple not from BookMooch:
The Earth Moved (earthworms and organic gardening)
Epitaph for a Peach (organic farming)

#21 I just bought a copy of Judge Sewall's Apology at a used bookstore a couple weeks ago. Did you enjoy it?

Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food

Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee - The Dark History of the Food Cheats

Are two books on my wishlist you might enjoy.

Thank you carlym. I managed to find a copy of French Dirt yesterday at one of the local Value Villages. I will keep an eye out for the books on your recommendation list--The Great Cat Massacre sounds especially interesting.

Bcteagirl, the Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee sounds like an excellent read for me as well!

#22: I haven't read it yet. I was just trying to suggest some titles that were available at least at some point on BookMooch, not necessarily ones I read and liked (I didn't make that very clear), so I've only read some of the ones on the two lists.

I'm not short of wishlist books but I would love to know of good baseball fiction.

We always get my father-in-law (a semi-reluctant reader) a book for x-mas and the last two years we did baseball fiction which he loved. He finished Waiting for Teddy Williams in two days which is unheard of.
Before that was David James Duncan's The Brothers K which he also really liked.

I'm reading Michael Chabon's Summerland now to see if it'll be a good fit.

Any ideas are welcome. I've found that I actually like baseball - in book form at least ;)

Oh and special bonus love for books related in some way to the Red Socks. The brother-in-law is the next book target :)

>26 willowbean:

Has he read:
Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella?

I hope you like Summerland. It's one of my favorite books ever, but I was already a baseball fan.

How about Comeback by Dave Dravecky?

>26 willowbean: The Curious Case of Sidd Finch by George Plimpton, maybe?