What I'm Up Too

Some of the blogs I read regularly seem to be on hiatus for greater or lesser amounts of time. Others seem to be in a self reflective mood. Consequently, I've had a little time on my hands to try to catch up on my reading (I have a mound of books). So here is what I have been reading lately:

Frogs, Flies and Dandelions: The Making of Species by Menno Schilthuizen (recommended by John Wilkins on a recent post of his) with a very interesting discussion of Archirrhinos haecklii (very remarkable creatures).

Natural Selection in the Wild by John Endler - everything you ever wanted to know about natural selection - what it is, how it's studied, what's been studied.

The Neanderthals: Of Skeltons, Scientists and Scandal By Eric Trinkaus and Pat Shipman - fascinating account of the history of Neanderthal studies by one of the experts on Neanderthals.

The Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman - I wasn't sure about this one at first. Started kind of slow. Turned out to be a good book on Homo erectus (incidentally, I once met Alan Walker - UT has a Visiting Lecturer series where the bring in all types of anthropologists to talk about current research and he was one of the people they brought in - real nice guy).

The Triple Helix: Gene Organism and Environment by Richard Lewontin - (PZ Myers is always talking about this one over at Pharyngula so I thought I'd read it)interesting examination of the philosophical underpinnings of biology.

I'm currently reading:

The Nature of Selection by Eliot Sober

Up Next:

Embryos and Ancestors by Gavin de Beer
Reconstructing Human Origins by Glen Conroy
Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton
Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould (I've had this one for about a month, keep putting off reading it because of it's length).