2015 VNSA Used Book Sale

A sampling of my finds from our yearly trek to the VNSA Used Book Sale:

Sci-Fi

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick -- the inspiration for Blade Runner.  I had a few others of his but had never picked this one up.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester -- on most lists of the best sci-fi books of all time.  I have not read this author yet.
Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks -- Banks is probably my favorite sci-fi author.  I have almost all of his books now.

The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss

Science Non-Fiction 

Wrinkles in Time:  Witness to the Birth of the Universe by George Smoot
A More Perfect Heaven:  How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos  by Dava Sobel
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

The Poincare Conjecture by Donal O'Shea -- nerdy math stuff.  I love it.
The Case for Mars:  The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must  by Robert Zubrin

General Non-Fiction & History

Benjamin Franklin:  An American Life by Walter Isaacson -- After reading John Adams and now reading Team of Rivals, I'm kinda hooked on political history.
Code Breaking:  A History and Exploration  by Rudolf Kippenhahn
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Garbage Land:  On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte 

Soul Made Flesh:  The Discovery of the Brain by Carl Zimmer

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” -- Jane Austen

2013 VNSA Used Book Sale

A sampling of my finds from our yearly trek to the VNSA Used Book Sale:

Sci-Fi

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson -- a modern classic sci-fi author that I have never gotten around to and what is considered his best book

Cyteen and Downbelow Station by C.J.  Cherryh -- another "classic" modern author that I have not read before
Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear -- a sequel to Forge of God, which I've already read and liked
Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
Earthclan:  Startide Rising & The Uplift War by David Brin -- I have read other Brin stuff and liked it.
Science Fiction:  The Illustrated Encyclopedia by John Clute --This is a really nice coffee-table book with a fairly comprehensive overview of all science fiction (movies, TV, books, comics, etc.)
When looking for new sci-fi books, I let my own experience guide me but I also referred to several lists of the the top science fiction books of all time, including:

David Pringle's Science Fiction:  The 100 Best Novels
Sci-Fi Lists:  Top 100 Sci-Fi Books
NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

Science Non-Fiction 

Chaos:  Making a New Science by James Gleick
Quantum Man:  Richard Feynman's Life in Science by Lawrence M. Krauss -- Feynman and Krauss ... two of my scientific heroes. 

Not a Drop to Drink:  America's Water Crisis by Ken Midkiff

General Non-Fiction & Philosophy

Don't Eat This Book:  Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock -- a companion piece to the excellent documentary Super Size Me
The Island at the Center of the World:  The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America  by Russell Shorto
Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol
Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier -- I'm a modernist nerd and this is considered one of the "bibles" of modernism.

Postcards from Ed (Abbey):  Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Bertrand Russell:  A Collection of Critical Essays edited by D.F. Pears

"For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects." -- Gene Roddenberry

2012 VNSA Used Book Sale

A sampling of my finds from our yearly trek to the VNSA Used Book Sale:

Sci-Fi

Virtual Light by William Gibson (one of my favorite authors. This is the last book of his that I did not have.)

The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies by John Scalzi

Science Non-Fiction

Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution by Madison Smartt Bell

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard Feynman
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit
They All Laughed ... Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions that have Changed Our Lives by Ira Flatow
eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben

General Non-Fiction & Philosophy

AThe Lord of the Rings and Philosophy Edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson

The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm
The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
This Game of Ghosts: The Sequel to Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (yet another book about mountain climbing ... I love these!)
The End of Oil: On the Ege of a Perilous New World by Paul Roberts

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf
Render Unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects fo the Christian Rights' Crusade against Science by James H. Fetzer
Modern Architecture: since 1900 by William J. R. Curtis
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress ... by Michael Specter (Wunelle had turned me on to this book and I was thrilled to find it)

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." -- Confucius

2011 VNSA Used Book Sale

Finds from our yearly trek to the VNSA Used Book Sale:

Sci-Fi

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
River of Gods by Ian McDonald
Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko
The Forge of God by Greg Bear
Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
Earthman Come Home by James Blish (1955 1st Ed.)

Science Non-Fiction

"Dragons of Eden", "Cosmic Connection", "Billions and Billions ..." all by Carl Sagan
Black Holes and Baby Universes ... by Stephen Hawking
Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes by Alex Vilenkin
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh
The Origin of Humankind by Richard Leakey
Darwin's Dangerous Idea:  Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel Dennett

The Third Chimpazee ... by Jared Diamond

General Non-Fiction

Amazing Grace:  The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol

May Man Prevail? by Erich Fromm
Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell ... by Bertrand Russell
The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson
The Great Unraveling ... by Paul Krugman

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them" -- Ray Bradbury

My finds from the 2010 VNSA Used Book Sale

Great finds again at this year's sale:

Sci-Fi

Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling
Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan
Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

Science Non-Fiction

The four following authors spoke at the Origins Symposium I attended last year (3 of which I saw):
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Hiding in the Mirror by Lawrence m. Krauss (the head of the Origins Iniative at ASU and author of several 'Physics of ...' books)
Present at the Future by Ira Flatow (host of Science Friday on NPR
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

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Science Friction by Michael Shermer

Why Does E=mc2? by Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw (Cox was on Colbert recently discussing this book

Political

Truth and Consequences by Keith Olbermann
Hot, Flat & Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman
Straight Talk from the Heartland by Ed Schultz
The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson (Valerie Plame's husband)

Adventure/Climbing

I'm a nut for books about mountain climbing:

The Hill by Ed Hommer
Touching My Father's Soul by Jamling Tenzing Norgay
No Shorcuts to the Top by Ed Viesturs

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

My haul from the VNSA Used Book Sale

I talk about this sale every year ... because it's awesome!

Here are the highlights of the books (almost all hardbacks) that I picked up at this year's VNSA Used Book Sale -- 52 years of selling gobs of used books to benefit local charities (AZ Friends of Foster Children, Literacy Volunteers of Maricopa Country, and Toby House:

Sci-Fi

The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
A World Out of Time by Larry Niven
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert


Achlles' Choice by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow (I just read Towing Jehovah by this author ... very good)

Science Non-Fiction

The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
The Riverkeepers by John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Political

Nickel and Dimed
This Land is Their Land
both by Barbara Ehrenreich
Right is Wrong
Fanatics and Fools
both by Arianna Huffington
Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

Misc

Beyond Good & Evil by Nietzsche

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146