I went to my local library today and as is my habit, checked out a
ton of books even though I don't have time to read more than one or
two of them. I guess I hope the information in the rest of them will
seep into me via osmosis...

I was at a different library today - but in the same region for my
library card. Both my libraries are small 'sub' libraries with
perhaps 20-30 books on each non-fiction subject - across the whole
range of the subject, not on each discipline *in* a subject...so
usually there is slim pickings and I get most of my books through
interlibrary loan.

But, I hadn't browsed through this library before and saw plenty of
interesting books, but contented myself with only a few:

Women of the Air, Judy Lomax, 1987 - history of women pilots,
balloonists, etc.
Women in Space, Carole S. Briggs, 1999
Women With Wings, Jacqueline McLean, 2001
----common thread here being of course female pilots. Astronauts,
etc. I'll be compiling a database of these women for Gale Force -
the website for Avengerous women that I hope to launch properly one
day....

Miss Leavitt's Stars, George Johnson, 2005 - biography of Henrietta
Leavitt, the female "computer" who "discovered how to measure the
universe."

Great Feuds in Science : Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. Hal
Hellman. 1998. Including Urban VIII vs Galileo, Newton vs Leibniz,
Wallis vs Hobbes (of Calvin and Hobbes fame), Voltaire vs Needham
(have no idea, thought Voltaire was a playwright), Darwin's Bulldog
vs Soapy Sam, Lord Kelvin vs geologists and biologists, Cope vs
Marsh, Wegener vs everybody, Johanson vs Leakeys, Derek Freeman vs
Margaret Mead.)

Between Ocean and Bay: A Natural History of Delmarva - selected not
only because it's about an area in Virginia (where I live) but
because I'm also interested in oceanography and geology...

So hopefully if I structure my time right in the next week I can
both read and compile info from all these books.

So....what are you guys reading???