44) Beverly Lewis, The Sacrifice (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2004, ISBN 0764228757). Third in an Amish family saga, and a bit of nostalgic escapism for me, albeit born of a longstanding interest in Amish and Mennonite beliefs and practices. They first came to my attention because the town where I grew up in Germany was not far from a site where many Anabaptists were martyred. Later, I learned that some dear family friends had Mennonite relatives. When I was seventeen, they helped me get in touch with a Mennonite family in Virginia, and I stayed with them one summer, going to classes at the nearby Mennonite college and also visiting an Old Order community.

43) Nancy Weber, The Life Swap (Lincoln: iUniverse, 2006, ISBN 0595378218). A reprint from the 1970s, when Nancy Weber pre-empted reality TV by swapping lives for a week with another woman. It does not turn out well, although this article shows that she does not regret it. Hat-tip for that link to rosefox, who is Nancy Weber's daughter and my sister-by-choice; that connection made reading this book an oddly familiar experience, because I kept seeing Rose in Nancy.

42) Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse Five (New York: Dell, 1969, no ISBN given). A classic that I hadn't got round to before; it deserves its status. The blurb describes it as "hilarious" and "a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh", given that the narrative centres on the devastating (and probably criminal) Allied bombing of Dresden in WWII. I'd say it is more absurdist than comedic.

41) David JC MacKay, Sustainable Energy - without the hot air (Cambridge: UIT, 2009, ISBN 9780954452933). A really important book for anyone interested in energy policy. djm4 has reviewed this here, and I mostly agree with him. Unlike him, I was irritated by some features of the book - particularly the use of unnumbered endnotes rather than headnotes, and the inconsistent use of coloured fonts, which sometimes mean something and sometimes do not. The notes issue matters particularly because at least once, MacKay makes a deliberately misleading statement in the chapter text and corrects it in an endnote. On the whole, though, I think his calculations are probably as reliable as current knowledge permits. When it comes to his proposed solutions, I was frustrated by his glib dismissal of the risks of nuclear power; he is right that the past fatality rate from nuclear power is better than that of coal, for instance, but he does not address at all the future risk from decommissioning and long-term environmental contamination. This feels like something of a let-down, because this risk assessment turns out to be crucial, in my view, to what the correct energy policy for the UK must be. If nuclear power is acceptably safe, then MacKay's conclusions make a plan based largely on nuclear power look like the best option for sustainable energy in the UK. This is also the plan he thinks a free market will approximate most closely if left to its own devices. If nuclear power is not acceptably safe, then my favoured plan would probably be his "plan G", which relies on wind power and pumped storage to an extent that would radically change our countryside, and would therefore require massive central government intervention to enforce.

Overall, this was a fascinating and challenging read. As djm4 says, read it now - but don't skip the endnotes, and read up on the risks and benefits of nuclear power as well. I intend to.