I got a A Short History of Nearly Everything for Christmas, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Currently I, like Keris, am reading Tcl and the Tk Toolkit. There's a small pile of books I bought from the local library sale, including the first Flashman, waiting to be read, or I might succumb to ordering some of my Amazon wishlist (get the remaining Aubrey/Maturin novels - I did try before Christmas, but they sent the wrong edition, and having two non-matching covers in a series of twenty when matching ones exist was annoying enough I sent them back). I've recently read Revelation Space and Cosmonaut's Keep, both of which have sequels I want to read, and American Gods.