Miss Mackenzie - Anthony Trollope Minor Trollope, but a good read. "Is it not remarkable that the common repute which we all give to attorneys in the general is exactly opposite to that which every man gives to his own attorney in particular? Whom does anybody trust so implicitly as he trusts his own attorney? And yet is it not the case that the body of attorneys is supposed to be the most roguish body in existence?"
the same sentiment is couched in much the same language in The Eustace Diamonds and also voiced iirc in The Way We live Now.
Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, a 5-day series of interviews conduced by David Lipsky. This is a reread in order to see how the adaptation of this book works in a movie. A pretty good book that I'm a bit worried will be ill-served by the movie.
Alfred the Great -- Eleanor Shipley Duckett The subtitle of the book calls this a "warm" account of Alfred's life. Warm must have meant something different in 1955, when the book was published, because it is still pretty dry. I know there's not much a ton of information available to a king who lived late in the 9th Century, but I don't think I'd want to read a "cold" history...
Shadows on the Rock - Willa Cather Historical novel about Quebec in 1697. Not as good as Death Comes for the Archbishop, but still worth reading.
The Geography of Genius - Eric Weiner Eric Weiner travels to various countries in search of a connection between place and creative genius. While this isn't bad, it doesn't come close to his previous two books, The Geography of Bliss and Man Seeks God.
Finished the second book in the Peculiar Children series by Ransom Riggs, in which he builds plots around these really cool vintage photos from various collections. I sent the book set to my niece for her birthday.
Now reading Samantha Nutt's book Damned Nations about aid work in conflict zones, and how we might get to a better spot. It isn't terribly hopeful. We're hosting her on campus in early April and I had only read snippets before now.
I could see myself reading that. A bit like Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything but written by a layman with much more knowledge of current scientific theories, clearly Hands is an extremely clever man but without Bryson's wit and charm. I personally regard him as the finest English poet since Auden. If he's not your cup of tea then it's just a massive doorstop. Up there with King of the World by David Remnick as the best boxing book I've read. Mercifully short for a Mailer book.
Speaking of English poets of a certain generation... Astrology (1964) by Louis MacNeice. An interesting book on the subject's history and significance in various culture's through history. But through this great range from the sublime to the ridiculous and underlying all the variations, mystical, whimsical, ingenious, or plain silly, two things can always be found: a certain sense if mystery and a certain hankering for harmony. Later chapters may indicate how traditional astrology originated with the first and attempted to satisfy the second. And this is decidedly NOT a book I read in the friendly neighborhood coffee shop before work in the morning.
Reading this now: This is a memoir that isn't a memoir, or a memoir that is also literature. It takes the form of letters from author Mary-Louise Parker to various men from various times in her life. But it isn't really about the men, it's about her life, and she's funny, insightful, ironic, biting, honest, and a whole lot of other things. The format could get repetitive but does not. It's unique and I highly recommend it.
Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians (2014) by Justin Martin. Really interesting book about America's literary underground wayyyyyyyyy before anyone had an idea of an American literary underground. Fitz Hugh Ludlow, advocate of hashish, predates that poseur Timothy Leary as an advocate for mind expanding drugs by nearly a century, and is a new hero. Here's a rendition of Whitman's pre-Civil War watering hole, Pffafs...
Sorry I missed this - I got them for my ten year old niece but 12 is probably better. But the boxed set comes with photo cards that my niece will enjoy and I know my sister will read the books in the meantime.
With a weekend with no MLS, weather than won't let me go out in the yard, and only about five hours of work for a change, I am hoping to finish this over the next couple of days: This is the sixth Matthew Shardlake mystery set in Tudor England. I like them quite a bit, and the religious intrigue mixed with court politics is wonderful.
The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts edited by Frank Burch Brown (2014). A boatload of essays by various scholars on the religious dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of religions around the world. Given that all the authors are Ph.Ds and most are career academics, an amazing number of essays are clearly and accessibly written. A few... not so much. But it's not like there's going to be a test on it, so I can skip those guys. Glad it was in the library, because Amazon lists it at $150.
The Five Ages of the Universe I've just re-read this. For a 15 year old book it doesn't really seem that dated. Of course more likely I don't know enough cosmology to know how dated this book really is.
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber I picked this up on a whim at a yard sale and while the subject was interesting per se, more interesting was Berber's largely unstated thesis that it's most important to notice what's not there, especially since this is a history of perishables. I enjoyed it.