What I've Read, What I'm Reading
I loved behavioral economist Dan Ariely's fascinating and very smart book, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, which I read a few months back, and his previous, equally smart and fascinating book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

Right now, in addition to all my required science reading, I'm reading Sam Lipsyte's novel, The Ask.

Lipsyte's book is dark and lovely, as the old curl activator commercials would say, and the writing is "delightfully nasty," in the words of top Amazon reviewer E. Jacobs. I concur. Jacobs continues: "There is no part of this book that is uplifting except for the humor itself."

Halfway through, and really enjoying it. The spare prose is a big plus. Hate books with pages and pages of unnecessary words. A bit of prose I liked, from page 31:

"The fall of the Soviet Union, this was, the death of analog. The beginning of aggressively marketed nachos."