Mike's five

1. The Great Shark Hunt, Hunter S. Thompson
This is a collection of all Thompson's early journalism, including his writing from South America and the Caribbean while he traveled there dispatching articles to various magazines in the states (around age 22!), his early coverage of the Nixon administration, and everything he wrote for Rolling Stone. The prose is very lean and economical - Thompson is a writer who teaches me a lot about writing itself - and many of the stories, especially The Kentucky Derby one, the Great Shark Hunt, and the one about Washington D.C. burglaries are hilarious.
2. All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald
The subtitle of this is "A Family Story from Southie," (South Boston), but that hardly encapsulates it. The book gives a real feel for the old Southie neighborhood (not unlike the South Philly piece, but much more in depth), for better or worse, and the characters are un-inventably awesome, especially the author's mother. Also touches on some interesting racial history in Boston, with the bussing problems in the 70s and 80s. Sounds corny but the stuff this author has seen and gone through, and the unpretentious, unsolicitous way he presents it will teach you a thing or two about life. It's not long and the writing is trim and easy to read - you can blow through this on a plane ride or a day at the beach...won't take a lot of your time, definitely worth picking up.
3. Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway
A pretty exhaustive examination of the "tragedy" of bullfighting in Spain as Hemingway has known it. Some chapters get a little too technical and in-depth as far as the ins and outs of the art/sport itself, but now and then he allows himself to digress into his experiences in Spain, descriptions of its geography and culture, and general extrapolations from bullfighting to life, and those parts will blow you away; they absolutely make the rest of the book worthwhile. He also adopts a sort of internal conversation technique with an invented listener which, believe it or not, made me laugh out loud (this is Hemingway we're talking about).
If you're only half-motivated and come across this book in a library or bookstore, just read the last chapter - it's full of beautiful descriptions of Spain.
4. The Executive Brain, Elkhonon Goldberg
I am a huge neuro-nerd. If you're at all interested in the brain and the astronomical advances that have been made toward understanding it in the past half-century, you'll like this book. Even if you don't, it's a quick read and will make you feel like you're an expert after you read it. It's not all science - it touches on the possible link between artistic compulsions and neurological disorders, mentioning Poe, Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, and others with conditions that likely influenced their art. Fascinating.
5. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
This is in my top three favorite books ever. Allegedly it's a novel, but I believe that its true classification is CNF and in any case anyone who wants to write CNF will benefit from reading it. Like Thompson's prose, its clean, economical style will teach you how to write, and at the same time it's full of interesting sociological observations that Orwell makes as he lives in abject poverty first in Paris and then in London. In Paris he works two restaurant jobs and his descriptions of the back of the house and life among restaurant staff are masterful, insightful, and hilarious. Out of all five books I just listed, I'd recommend this most strongly - the other four are tied to my own interests, but I really think anyone who picks this book up will like it, especially if your curiosity about bars and restaurants was piqued by my piece.

5 books

see below...

5 books

Dispatches by Michael Herr
A book that captures the vietnam war. Pretty much all I have to say about that. Its truly excellent (an referenced in one of the interviews we read)

Chaos by James Gleick
A book that explains the history and concept of chaos, very relevant for pretty much any field and extremely interesting.

New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers by Robert S. Desowitz
An entertaining, approachable and accurate introduction to parasites a topic you never know you were interested in until now...

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Classic and poetic and ruthless. Easy enough that paris hilton can read it, deep enough that you could spend hours thinking about it.

Rivethead by Ben Hamper
I read this for ihum and have to admit that I liked it. Its about working in an automotive assembly plant in Flint michigan. Michael Moor did a film about this place.

Beth's picks

1) Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond is a wide-ranging book that essentially attempts to explain why there are huge disparities of power and resources between countries and cultures. Diamond covers everything from human evolution to agriculture to conquistadors. I read it a while back and remember being fascinated by his ideas. Take it all with a grain of salt--Diamond's not an expert in everything, though he paints with such a good brush you want to believe it all.

2) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks chronicles Sacks's experiences with patients suffering from all kinds of bizarre neurological disorders from being unable to function without music to being unable to feel their own bodies (loss of "proprioception"). It's both detailed and compassionate, a fascinating read.

3) Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose is Ambrose's take on the Lewis and Clark expedition, basically a digest/adaptation of the expedition journals. Riveting. It's amazing those guys survived.

4) In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson is Bryson's account of traveling solo in Australia. It's hilarious, and makes a really good book on tape.

5) Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller is a kind of spiritual autobiography about Miller's experiences with Christianity at Reed College and in Portland, Oregon. Never, ever preachy, and often really insightful. I liked best the scene in which Miller and friends set up a confessional booth on Reed campus--so that they could confess Christianity's sins to their audience!

Five Reads

1. The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger.
I've mentioned this book on my blog before, as my father was once a swordboat captain and spotter. In what became a blockbuster film, Junger chronicles the 1991 Halloween nor'easter that took the lives of six swordfishermen, interspersed with information about the swordfishing industry as well. If you like this book, check out female swordboat captain Linda Greenlaw's The Hungry Ocean, though it's a rather fluffy read.

2. The Climb, by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt.
If you were disgusted by Krakauer's account of the deathly May 1996 Everest expedition of which he was a member, this book offers Russian guide Boukreev's side of the story. Though not as well-written as Into Thin Air, I enjoyed reading Boukreev's take on the same situation.

3. Song for the Blue Ocean, by Carl Safina.
This is a beautifully written, brutally honest portrait of the plight of the world's oceans and fisheries. While I find Safina a bit self-absorbed at times, I like how he clearly focuses on bluefin tuna, salmon, and coral reefs to illustrate the enormous environmental challenges we face.

4. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich.
I think Ehrenreich, an educated woman who lived undercover holding various minimum wage jobs, wittily succeeds in illustrating how painfully difficult life is in this country without sufficient income.

5. The Bookseller of Kabul, by Asne Seierstad.
Seierstad, a young female Norwegian journalist, lived with the large extended Khan family (headed by bookseller Sultan Khan) in Afghanistan in 2002. What interested me most was Seierstad's ability as a Westerner to interact not only with Khan's women, but also with the men. Despite its very strong Western bias, I think Seierstad's book offers an interesting perspective on Afghan family life after September 11.