Puttering in the Study

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

This book has been rather popular lately, and it is easy to see why - it is a very interesting study of the science that explains what we are and how we exist, from discussions on how the planet came to be, to how we nwork on a subatomic level. It is full of fascinating information and terrific stories about the odd personalities that have played such a major role in science.
Bryson gives appropriate credit to a similar book that is focused on geology - Annals of a Former World by the incomparable writer John McPhee.

The Book on the Bookshelf - Henry Petroski

That I really, really liked this book is probably a clue as to how dull a person I really am. This book is a fascinating account not really of the history of books, but of the history of book storage. It goes through the various methods of book storage from scrolls through codices in the Middle Ages, focusing on the creation of actual book "shelves", which for many years consisted on desk space for chained books, and only gradually evolving into the standing bookshelves we take for granted today.

Jinn - Matthew Delaney

The author has a real talent for realism (in battle scenes) and the creepy ideas that really drive a horror book. The majority of the book is really good and the ideas that power it are first rate. The problem is toward the end of the book when the "Jinn" becomes such a complex idea that it's really hard - even after rereading pages in detail - to figure out what the bad guy really is. Not who - what. This is an example of a book that could be vastly improved by being simplified into a movie.
My favorite part of the book was the detailed history (going back centuries) that Delaney creates for the Jinn, not unlike Anne Rice has done in the past for her monsters (most notably in "The Witching Hour").