Buried in books

Besides being behind on The New Yorker, I'm in the middle of reading four books and not making much headway with any of them. The first is a great novel called Shantaram. I put in on the back burner because, although it's a thick book, I'm enjoying it so much I don't want it to end. The other three are nonfiction: Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett, The End of Faith, by Mark Harris and Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax. I also picked up The Best Science Writing of 2005 when I was at the library last.

Dennet's book is great and I like his writing, but it's getting more difficult as I get further into it. He does try to make it easier by including at the end of each chapter a brief synopsis of what the chapter was about as well as a preview of the next chapter.