Anyone know what’s going on with Jon & Kate this week? Or where Megan Fox ate dinner last night? How’s Mischa Barton doing after, you know, the thing? How was your sister’s date with that guy? Did she text you from the restaurant? Have you uploaded those pictures of the kids to Flickr yet? Have you pulled up the real time traffic for your commute?

Moving beyond “how to” guides, Hal Niedzviecki’s provocative new book The Peep Diaries is one of the first efforts (that I’m aware of) to marshal the latest evidence and ask a deeper question about this surfeit of information. If technology and the “instant update” have radically changed both our information appetite and our information diet, what are the social consequences?

Starting at the point where pop culture and technology intersect, Niedzviecki catalogs the emergence of what he calls “peep culture” and argues that “we’re all learning to love watching ourselves and our neighbors…. You need to know. You need to be known.” Niedzviecki cites blogging, reality television, celebrity gossip, and social networking as the pillars of peep. He argues that this “perfect storm” of new media developments and new technology has radically changed both the rules and possibilities for the exchange of personal information in society. In aggregating our fractured pop culture this way, Niedzviecki holds a mirror up to our appetites and concerns. “Suddenly, all things once sacred and private… are to be observed and consumed.” As we indulge the impulse both to watch and be watched, Niedzviecki argues that our identities and values are challenged and transformed.

Niedzviecki’s investigation is a must-read. He uses a range of examples (some of which, by way of warning, are mature in theme and content) to suggest that recent changes in our attitudes toward celebrity, privacy, media, and technology are pervasive and transformative. Ultimately his is a thesis about our voracity for information and knowledge in the twenty-first century, and about our changing perception of what constitutes valid or essential knowledge. Take a look at The Peep Diaries, then come back and share your comments about peep culture.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

I don’t remember how I first heard about Coop, but I’m glad I found it. Author Michael Perry, a native of Wisconsin, tells the story of being on 37 acres of farmland with fallen fences and overgrown fields, wanting to raise pigs and chickens. In the midst of all this, his pregnant wife has plans of delivering their baby at home.

By trade Perry is a writer — the contributing editor to Men’s Health, with articles appearing in other publications, as well. This, as he says in the book, is his "bread and butter." While working on Coop, he was busy writing; occasionally performing in his band; trying to raise his own chickens and pigs; but above all, being a good husband and father.

I love the way Perry writes about his childhood — the many children his parents took in to raise in addition to their own; their simple life on the farm; and the quiet faith that gave them a solid grounding. One example that stands out in my mind is "Sunday Popcorn." Mike’s mother would make popcorn in a pan on the stove while the family gathered around the kitchen table to help with passing plates of food, mixing up Kool-Aid, and salting the popcorn. During the second part of this Sunday night tradition, everyone was allowed to bring a book to read at the table (prohibited at any other time). Even today, members of the grown families still return to their parents’ house to participate in "Sunday Popcorn."

Perry seems like a down-to-earth, "real" person; he doesn’t put on airs, writing about both his mistakes and his achievements. Once in a while he throws in words I’d never heard before (like "tatterdemalion"), but he covers mundane things, as well as humorous stories — being bitten in the butt while wrestling a pig, accidentally killing one of his chickens by dropping a whole bale of chicken wire on top of it, and explaining how his father once drove home with a "giant lactating Holstein tethered to the bumper of his Ford Falcon."

Coupled with his writing from the heart, covering topics such as the birth of his daughter, and the death of a good friend, Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting is a title you won’t want to miss.

Michele Happel – Miller Branch

I painstakingly went through The Reason For God, one chapter per week, with a bunch of guys from my church and really enjoyed it.  While it tackles the same topics as similar books, it’s not exactly what I expected.  Timothy Keller, the Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, takes a unique approach, promoting the idea that either all things (or else no things) point to the existence of God.  Drawing from decades of interactions with skeptics and believers alike, Keller’s arguments are simultaneously humane, rational, and personal.  Keller’s method is to respectfully turn objections discounting his thesis upside-down and use them instead as "clues" (not necessarily "proofs") to support that thesis.

Many of the objections he tackles are brought up by other modern thinkers including Christopher Hitchens (author of God Is Not Great), Sam Harris (author of Letter to a Christian Nation), and Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion).

I found Dawkins’ book, in particular, to be a very suitable companion to The Reason For God.  Unashamedly on the other side of the debate from Keller, his explicit goal is to demonstrate conclusively that there is no God.  Unfortunately, Dawkins’ tone of voice is consistently less-than-polite, and at times annoyingly condescending, which is likely to turn away many otherwise open-minded readers.  Nevertheless, this fast-paced, well thought out, and passionate criticism of modern religion approaches the category of "mandatory reading."  I found myself nodding my head to many of his more philosophical points.

If your book discussion group is interested in these topics, I would suggest reading Keller’s book along with The God Delusion.  There is enough overlap of content to ensure a fair balance of opinion.

Dan Curry – Savage Branch

Lisa See, best known for her novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, started out as a non-fiction author, telling the story of her own family in the magnificent On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family. Thanks to family stories and government records, See has a remarkable knowledge of her family and is able to comprehensively recreate the lives of her ancestors as far back as her great-great-grandfather. See’s family story is dynamic, vital and engaging. While many of our ancestors were working the same piece of land or living in the same town from generation to generation, See’s ancestors were building a series of successful businesses in California, traveling to visit relatives in China, and striving to build a foundation for future generations on “gold mountain.”

See begins her narrative with her great-great-grandfather Fong Dun Shun, an herbalist supporting the Chinese laborers working to construct the trans-continental railroad, and continues with the story of her great-grandfather, Fong See, and his arrival in the United States. Fong See established himself as a businessman in Sacramento, whose factory making undergarments for prostitutes was gradually transformed into a large import business bringing antiques and furnishings from China. The main instigator of this transformation was See’s great-grandmother, Letticie Pruett, a white woman born in Oregon in 1876, who set out for California on her own, and met Fong See while she was looking for work.

We spend a great deal of time with the children of Ticie and Fong See, the author’s great grandparents and great-great aunts and uncles. The “one hundred year odyssey” referred to in the subtitle is really that of Milton, Ray, Eddie, Benny and Sissee’s generation. These are the people who the reader follows from childhood to old age, through World War II, through the economic conditions of the mid-to-late twentieth century, and through the family negotiations around separations, business disagreements and accommodations with their father’s other family in China.

Although this is a family history, it is also a detailed social history of California and of the broader U.S. in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Working on these multiple levels, On Gold Mountain is an outstanding, rewarding and uniquely constructed work of non-fiction, notable both because See knows so much about her family, and because their experiences were so extraordinary.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

If you occasionally wish for simpler times, then take a mini-vacation and visit another era with Little Heathens, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Reading it will provide a glimpse into how some people lived during the Depression, without cell phones, DVDs, video games, or computers to interfere with everyday life.

The author’s family (her mother and three siblings) grew up on a farm in Iowa which belonged to her grandparents. Besides walking to school every day in all kinds of weather, the children were expected to help out with chores from milking cows, hauling water from the pump to the house for weekly baths, to bringing in kindling for the stove for the next day’s cooking. Any child who forgot to gather the kindling the night before would be roused from bed and instructed to go get it immediately.

Along with the anecdotes about her life on the farm with her siblings and cousins, Mildred shares some of the family recipes she’s known since childhood. I am hoping to try a few myself sometime, they sound so good- marshmallows, pie crusts, apple candy pie, and applesauce cake.

Something that stays in my mind after reading this book is that when the children did actually have free time, they spent it playing ball with their friends and cousins in a nearby field, making games out of what they had on hand, but never finding themselves bored. For if they did say that they were bored to one of the grown-ups, they would immediately receive a job, like stacking wood for the fire, or scrubbing the porch. I wonder what kids today would think of that?

Try Little Heathens, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. You’ll be glad you did. And it’s only 290 pages, for those of you who may find it hard to squeeze in time to read just for fun.

For more information on the author, her book, and tasty recipes, visit www.little-heathens.com.

Michele Happel – Miller Branch