The Uncommon Reader -- Fun 100 page book that starts out very simple, and takes some serious twists.
The Greatest Show on Earth -- A non-fiction book by Richard Dawkins about the evidence for evolution. Some of it is stuff that's been brought up before in internet debates, but some of it was new stuff to me. Stuff like some of the ways evolution could be disproven, and hasn't (like a rabbit in the precambrian layer, flowers that predict certain insects must exist to pollinate them). Some interesting studies on bacteria that have been going on since the 80s, and thus have something on the order of 45,000 generations, including a mutation where the first part of the mutation had no particular benefit (only showed up in one of the 12 strains). Something that I probably already knew if I thought about it enough is that we have enough evidence for evolution even if we had never found a single fossil; fossil evidence, while substantial, is still nowhere near as massive as evidence from currently living creatures.
Another one that's new to me was his presenting a great deal of evidence against Intelligent Design--like nerves that go toward the thyroid, one of which goes directly, and one of which goes all the way down the neck, loops around a blood vessel, and comes back up the neck. Incredibly stupid as a design, but if you look at the equivalent nerves and organs in, say, a Shark, they're all very direct, they just cross over, which means when the organs in land animals moved to make a neck, one nerve was still crossed around a heart valve. And on the extreme end of the spectrum, in the Gyraffe, the same nerve passes within centimeters of its target, but instead takes a 15 foot detour into the abdomen. Or another fun one is why do Dolphins not have gills--like all mammal embryos they grow gills briefly in early development; wouldn't an intelligent creator think "hey, these are sea creatures, maybe they can use these gills" instead of nixing the gills, growing lungs, growing two nostrils and merging them into one, moving it on top of the head, and adding a blowhole cover skin flap.
Of course, philosophically-speaking you can't rule out "God is trying to fool us." In fact, philosophically speaking, God could have made the world 5 minutes ago with holes in our socks and hair that needs cutting deliberately to fool us into thinking the world has existed for much longer. The author argues that in order for evolution not to be true, we would need this level of intentional divine trickery.
Twilight: There's some vomit-inducing soft-porn in the middle, and some facepalm moments of stupidity from main characters, but in general this is a very fun book. The climax is pretty good. Also, I really want Bella to shack up with Alice. Besides the obvious "as long as it's not Edward" and "eww, heterosexual soft porn", Alice is just awesome, and already unusually intimate with Bella (definitely seems like she sees Bella naked before any of the other potential suiters).
Twilight 2 (New Moon): So...it's repeatedly beat into you "this book is riffing off of Romeo and Juliet." Pre-trans Jacob is a lot of fun. Hearing voices Bella is...an improvement on the old character, for all that she's probably more stupid. Post-trans Jacob is kinda lame, for all that there's flickers of the non-lame character. Bella and Edward pull a Romeo and Juliet, except tragically neither of them die
. Alice is awesome; she also still needs to shack up with Bella. The Volturi have style.
Twilight 3 (Eclipse): Answers an important question. Namely "so uhh...if the second largest vampire coven in the world has 6 members, aren't there some pretty easy ways around that if you want to crush them?" Some fun development of side characters like Rosalie and Jasper (who were previously not well-explained). Other than that, just closes the obvious plot threads, like "where's Victoria?" and "We're neighbours and want the same thing, but can't work together because we are MORTAL ENEMIES."
I'll have to borrow Twilight 4 from someone sometime. These are entertaining enough that I'd like to continue, but at the same time I don't have enough respect for the works to give the author more money, and can't imagine I'm going to reread these books.
