E-Media Tidbits

Amy Gahran As dedicated as she is to online media, Tidbits editor Amy Gahran owns far too many books.

Two years ago I queried all the Tidbit contributors about their reading lists. The result was a totally serious short list of recommended publications on the media trade: from "The Vanishing Newspaper" to "We the Media," and from "The Unmaking of AOL Time Warner" to "The Birth of Broadcast Journalism."

On the nightstands of the Tidbits contributors tonight, though...

Nonfiction

• Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, by Tony Judt. Says Steve Yelvington: "It's a very thick book. I'm stuck in the ethnic-relocation chaos of the immediate postwar months."
• The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel. Says Katja Riefler: "An excellent and fascinating in-depth novel about the genocide of the Armenians in World War I. The book was banned by the Nazi's shortly after its publication in 1933. If you read it, you'll know why."
• Eyes on the Prize America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 by Juan Williams, a volume that accompanied a PBS TV documentary. Says Adam Glenn: "For a civil rights tour of South in spring."
• Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence by A.J. Langguth. Says Steve Klein: "I start more books than I finish; I guess you could call that the old college try..."

Fiction

• Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood. Says Amy Gahran: "An excellent and haunting novel of a biotech dystopia."
• My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. Says Adam Glenn: "A superb novel."
• Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin. Norbert Specker read this "after viewing the restored sequel 6 to 11 of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's version in the Volksbühne during the Berlinale."
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. Says Alan Abbey: "This is the expanded 'author's cut' of a science fiction classic I first read nearly 40 years ago and reread periodically."
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Says Adam Glenn: "Terrific post-modern fiction that grapples with 9/11."

• All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News, by James T. (Jay) Hamilton. Says Steve Yelvington: "A Duke University economist explains how market forces shape news content, including editorial points of view and objective reporting."
• Beyond the Brand by John Winsor. Tish Grier is plowing through this marketing book currently.
• Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation by Marc Fisher. Steve Klein is giving this book "the old college try" too.
• The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. Amy Gahran will start reading this book tonight; she says she's "too complex."
• Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling
• Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel. Adrian Holovaty recommends this book and its companion site.
• The Networking Survival Guide by Diane Darling. Tish Grier hopes to benefit from this one.

It's an interesting list, if anything: from "how we got here," to "where are we going," to "how to escape."

Many of us admit that we have a hard time finishing any book, or even just starting to read the books we bought. Or buying the books we want to read. Too many e-mails, blog posts, news reports...

What books are you reading? Please comment below.