My wife and I recently went to Asheville, NC for the weekend and aside from walking around town, visiting the Biltmore Estate and watching a absurdly large group of hippies beat drums in the center of town, we spent quite a bit of time reading on the porch of the B&B where we were staying. What amazed me is that when the owner saw my wife reading the book Chef and she asked if he read it, he said, “reading? I don’t read.”

My wife, son and I probably go to the bookstore every other week and always walk out with a pretty big pile of books. When I taught 6th grade, I made sure to read to my students daily. I think I made it through five books during the year I taught. It made me feel pretty sad when I found out that many of the students had never been read to before.

I’ve never been the type of person who reads multiple books at once, but for some reason, I have three books going right now. Here is what I’m reading (and a couple of others that I recently finished).

Oil by Upton Sinclair- The movie There Will Be Blood is based on the novel. I’m a big fan of this era in American history and find myself reading quite a number of novels and historical texts from this time period. The book is very different from the movie.

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk – I have liked pretty much everything written by Palahniuk except for Fight Club. Pygmy is an odd story and is written in broken English and it took me a few pages to get into a flow. Here is Palahniuk’s description of the novel from his website:

The lead character is a 13-year-old foreign exchange student sent to live with a suburban, white, middle-class family. Oh, and they’re Christians. The visit is for six months, and he’s one of a dozen similar kids, all shipped to America to live with typical families. The secret truth is that Pygmy is a terrorist, trained since infancy in martial arts, chemistry and radical hatred of the United States. He has six months to build a prize-winning project for the National Science Fair. If he succeeds, he and his project will go to Washington, D.C. for the finals competition — where the project will explode, killing millions.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini -I was recently given this book while talking marketing with the CEO of a local Raleigh company. I’m only about 60 pages in, but I am already coming up with new marketing ideas. Some of the examples are a bit dated, Hare Krishna’s at airports and Amway, but the underlying message still translates to today.

The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight - I read this book in under 24 hours. I picked this book up at a local bookstore in Asheville and could have easily bought about seven other titles. The story is about a group of college-aged Muslim punks in Buffalo. I struggled a bit with some of the religious terms, but was sucked into the story pretty quick. Probably one of my favorite books of the past few years.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary – I am reading this childhood favorite to my son each night. He’s at the point where we can move past picture books and onto books like this. I love reading to him and have since the day he was born. He’s even able to read on his own.

Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott – I recently finished this book about a pair of sisters who ran the most successful brothel in Chicago, the Everleigh Club, during the 1920’s and 30’s. A good mix of history and fiction.

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments.