Rating: 5/5 University of Chicago Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (University of Chicago: 2010). It’s unusual to “review” reference works, perhaps, but the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS, or the “orange bible” [don’t let the dust cover fool you, the book is actually bright orange]) is too exceptional to not...

Rating: 5/5 Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010). I’ve been holding off writing this review so I could let the book percolate a bit in my head. Regardless of where you might stand theologically, the debate/struggle/discussion...

Rating: 5/5 Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind (New York: DAW, 2008). I have a general rule that forbids me from starting a series of books that’s not already finished. It can take years for a sequel to make it through production, and by that time I’ve read so many other books that I basically have to start over...

Rating: 5/5 Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (New York: Avon, 2011). Originally published in 1950, The Martian Chronicles is another of those classics that I have known about but never taken the time to read. This is a true piece of literary art—poetry. The core story is of the colonization of Mars. It doesn’t...

Rating: 5/5 William Davis, Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health (New York: Rodale, 2011). This is another book that talks about the low-carb diet, wheat in particular. Did you know that wheat impacts your blood sugar even more than table sugar? One of his main points is that...

Rating: 5/5 Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). If you wanted to read Taubes’s book Good Calories, Bad Calories (GCBC) but were put off by the 500 pages of small print, then immediately go out and get this book. This is a distillation of GCBC crammed into just over 200...

Rating: 5/5 Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). This book is required reading. If you care at all about your health, if you are diabetic or obese, if you just need to decide what to make for dinner, you...

This is another guest post by my wife, Adele. Rating: 5/5 Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Secret Daughter (New York: William Morrow, 2010). After I finished this book, when I had let the whole story sink in, I felt I had finished reading a work of art. The author uses the style of jumping from one person’s perspective to...

This is our first guest post. My wife, Adele, has been doing some reading and wanted to share her thoughts with all of you. Here we go! Rating: 5/5 Lisa Genova, Still Alice (New York: Pocket Books, 2009). A wonderful and educational read! This is a story of how one Alice discovers she has Alzheimer’s and how that...

Rating: 5/5 Lierre Keith, The Vegetarian Myth: Food Justice, and Sustainability, 4th ed. (Crescent City, CA: Flashpoint Press, 2009). Everyone should read this book. Don’t let the title fool you. It’s not a book just for vegetarians. Nor is it some brutal tirade against vegetarianism. Keith was a vegan for 20 years,...