Read: Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

I kind of wish I'd read this before I saw the movie. It's hard not to want to race ahead through Aron's remembrances of past outdoor adventures to get to the climax - the remarkable amputation of his own arm. I'll admit, I skimmed a lot, and I don't think I would have if I had read the book first. The movie really was remarkably well done - who would have thought it could hold your interest so intently, rooting for Aron to free his trapped arm, when the conclusion was inevitable and already known? I actually found Aron's description of how he amputated his arm to be more fascinating in the book than in the movie - it was easier to move past the squeamish factor and really understand the complexity of what he had to work through.

Read: Sarah Susanka - More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home

A good primer of Sarah Susanka's principles for making the most of small houses. It was written as a series of magazine articles originally, so it has a very readable format of small chunks of information, and enough repetition for the principles to sink in. There are definitely aspects of Christopher Alexander's design principles at work here, but they are more concretely defined, and practically instituted than in his "A Pattern Language".

Read: Sarah Susanka and Mark Vassallo - Not So Big Remodeling

In preparation for the move to our new (not so big) home, I'm reading books and day-dreaming about future home renovations. This is a great book - real-life renovations, from small to large scale, with practical information about saving money and making more out of small spaces.

Read: Cesar Millan - Cesar's Way

Another good book by Cesar Millan. I find it helpful reading more than one book, even though his principles of dog raising are the same - repetition is helping his lessons sink in. At least I hope so!

Read: Cesar Millan - How to raise the perfect dog, through puppyhood and beyond

In preparation for getting a puppy I'm starting to read dog books. Cesar Millan is pretty interesting - writes quite a bit about dog psychology and how not to humanize dogs. There are some counter-intuitive tips in how to make your dog as happy and fulfilled as possible - I'm glad I've read this before getting a dog.

Read: Shay Salomon - Little House on a Small Planet

This book is like an anthropological/sociological study of what it's like to live in a small house (which generally means less than 1000 sq ft, and in many cases just two or three hundred sq feet) mashed up with a design/architectural reference for small house and green building strategies. And the focus isn't just on the homes - it's also on the wider financial/social/environmental benefits of living small. I wish she had more books - I would read them all.

Read: Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson - The Great Typo Hunt, Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time

Initially I was put off by the overblown, flowery language. But Jeff Deck's earnest and kind-hearted to correct errors wherever he found them won me over. And as the story went on it became less of a personal quest and more of a general inquiry into how errors come to pass in the English language, and how we might mitigate that, which was really worth reading, particularly the part that examined English language instruction in schools.

One of the stranger aspects of checking this book out of the library was that some previous reader had gone through marking up all the items that he thought were mistakes. And yet only one of them was an actual error - the others were all differences of opinion in style, or actual misunderstandings of the text and the fact that it was correct. I'd love to go through marking up all the "corrections" with a "stet", except it's unlikely that the previous reader will ever see my mark-ups. Argh.