nature via nurture

Every year mom buys me a book for Christmas...it's one of those things i always look for, and get rather excited about. So this year Matt Ridley wins the elusive Christmas book prize with The Agile Gene. The old story of nature vs. nuture...but Ridley is very thorough and very up my alley when it comes to his research. We are not a product of only our genes, or only environment (i know, i know - DUH!)...and here he describes that indeed it's Nature VIA Nuture. His metaphors forsake the old "genes are the blueprint for building a human" story... and instead describes how genes are more of a recipe. We may share the same ingredients as a variety of species, but the activation and ultimate expression are very different. I can't begin to simplify it the way he does...
Anyway, I read Ridley's GENOME my senior year in college. So it was nice to meet up with Ridley again...he's an informative man, with a sense of humor. So i dropped Angels and Demons (and added it to my ever growing pile of half-reads), and hopped into the Agile Gene. Angels and Demons isn't bad by the way, I just got tired of it. The same thing happened with the Da Vinci code - I read half, put it down for a few months, then picked it up and finished it. I'll get back to Angels and Demons eventually, when curiosity gets the best of me. hrm. I have a rather eclectic collection of half-reads going at the moment. Some are collecting dust, others i pick up on a weekly basis. Here's a run-down of the last five or so half-reads and complete-reads i can think of (...i'm wondering if there's a pattern to my odd book-reading habits)

The Half-Read Collection (these are generally strewn on night-stands, and other areas where there are always visible and might be re-kindled)

1. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (almost done with this one, i stopped near the end when Hunter S. Thompson's Rum Diary caught my eye - finished that one)
2. Watership Down
3. In a Sunburned Country
4. Modern Man in Search of a Soul
5. Angels and Demons

The started and finished collection

1. The Beast in the Garden
2. The Sex Lives of Cannibals
3. The Food Revolution
4. The Da Vinci Code
5. Narcissus and Goldmund

Nope, no real pattern. I guess i just read how i think - stream of consciously. Not a bad thing i suppose.