One of my favorite Christmas presents to receive is a Barnes & Noble gift card. And this year my sister hooked the family up with a dandy. Alex was able to purchase two nice hardcovers by Garth Nix, and I picked up a few.

On my list for quite a while is a few books by Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, EFF board member, and a Stanford law professor. I bought The Future of Ideas and Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity.

In addition, I picked up We The Media, Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People by Dan Gillmor, who recently put his money where his mouth is, and left his job at the San Jose Mercury News to found a grassroots journalism project.

And last, but not least, Geoffrey Stone’s Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. Mr. Stone had the opportunity to guest on, but who else’s, Lawrence Lessig’s blog in December. Fascinating thoughts, facts, and history behind the governments role in free speech regulation during wartime. I’m really looking forward to reading this book.

It feels good to be buying non-fiction, and topics I believe in: Free Speech, copyright reform, and journalism. Now to finish off the two novels I’m reading and tackle some real reading material.