I spend hours on the train each day. And as much as I enjoy getting strangers asses bumped into my personal space, I usually like to find reasons to keep my head down and my mind occupied. So I read. With all that time, I get through a lot of books.
I’m always interested in what other people read, and, figuring that most people are like me in that respect, I usually post what I’ve been reading on the no-fault blog. And, like I’ve said before, I don’t get a lot of overlap in readership. In fact, I’m pretty sure nobody actually reads my posts here. Everyone just searches google for a section, this blog pops up, they click the link and find that I’ve wasted their time, and they go back to reading Above the Law and billing .4 or whatever. Either way, you’re here. Thanks for coming.
On that note, I received a gift-card as gift. That’s where it begins.
I finally got around to using my Barnes and Nobles gift-card and quadrupled my reading list in the process. I am still reading the Gulag book. While interesting, the writing doesn’t flow very well, making for a difficult read. Around the same time I got that one, I picked up Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose. Recently, someone asked me “Do books like that really help?” I think they do. They won’t change anything overnight, and none of the writing books I’ve read are mind-blowing, but I take bits and pieces of each one, sometimes unconsciously, and eventually, it seeps in. I’m pretty sure it works that way for everyone. So, short answer: It helps; at least for me.
The books I ordered are, Secret Lives of the Supreme Court: What Your Teachers Never Told You About America’s Legendary Justices(used); The Long Walk; Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky; Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson; Teacher Man: A Memoir; Small Is The New Big: And Other Rifts, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas; Dear American Airlines; The Elements of Legal Style (used); and John Adams. Almost all of them were under $8.00, which was nice. I also picked up Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, which I hear is similar to Blink. And I picked up a 2010 CPLR.
Because my attention-span is pathetic, I’m already reading three of them; switching between them when I get bored.
bruteforcelawyer.com 
Another good book, more for random reading or even reference, is “A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage,” by Bryan Garner.
It’s very good at helping delineate between close or confusing terms (many people don’t get “insure/ensure/assure,” for example). It also helps explain many older, crusty words that show up from time to time but should be rewritten for clarity.
It’s become my standard gift to new law grads/students.
(And at least some of us are reading.)
Rick Colosimo
rickcolosimo.com
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I was going to order some of Garner’s books, but they are expensive, even used. So I went with the least expensive one that I thought would be most useful. I really should pick that one up though. Have you read the one he co-wrote with Scalia? It is, by far, the best book on legal writing that I’ve come across. Surprisingly easy to read too. I attended Garner’s Advanced Legal Writing CLE a few years ago, and I’d recommend it to anyone. It was one of the few CLEs I took where I felt like my money was well spent.
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