A little over 200. If you cut out quotations and summaries of Schumacher, it would be lucky to be pushing 120.
Bag Man by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz. It's a tale of the crimes of former US Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Based on a podcast. Looks interesting.
The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction 1970-2015, a collection of essays and reviews about a variety of topics by Jim Harrison. The articles on hunting, many of which were published in Field and Stream and Sports Afield, were surprisingly compelling, given that I don't hunt. The collection was put together and introduced by longtime Harrison fan, and oft-mentioned in this thread, Luis Alberto Urrea.
Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara, the story of a 2008 fire in the wilderness south of San Francisco and East (for awhile, until the winds shifted) of Big Sur that threatened the Tassajara Zen monastary. Spoiler alert: the monks win. Turns out, they were pretty well prepared to do the work, to the extent the professional firefighters supported their non-evacuation plans in the face of a state bureaucracy that wanted them out (understandably). Colleen Morton Busch avoids melodrama and keeps the story moving pretty well.
Essentialism - Greg McKeown A pretty good look at prioritizing in all aspects of life that isn't groundbreaking but doesn't drift into the self-help mumbo jumbo world. A few of the chapters are really good, and the rest are good enough.
This is a remarkable attempt at an even-handed accounting of Qatar as World Cup 2022 host. It claims to be - and is - the first full academic analysis of the whole shebang. It's Qatar and the 2022 World Cup: Politics, Controversy, Change from Palgrave MacMillan. I knew of co-author Danyel Reiche before this; he has some pieces about the best ways countries that want to win Olympic medals can do so. Brannagan is good at contextualizing hosting things, even beyond sports, as small states look for influence. Overall it's as dry as one would expect from the first full academic look at Qatar 2022, but it fills an important contextual hole in the narrative. Pity most people pontificating about Qatar won't read it.
An Onion In My Pocket: My Life With Vegetables, a memoir by the author of many excellent cookbooks (who as if you couldn't tell from the title doesn't watch TV) Deborah Madison. Decent memoir. Glad my wife picked it up last summer.
Santa Evita by the late Argentine writer Tomas Eloy Martinez. It's a fictional tale of the last days and long life of the corpse of Evita Peron. Critically acclaimed. Should be a good read.
Oh, I will look for this. Between this and some skulls of revolutionary leaders and Santa Anna's embalmed leg, there was a very strangely linked theme in my old Latin American history survey course.
The Oldest Cure in the World: Adventures in the Art and Science of Fasting, which is a bit poorly subtitled because the word "history" should be there, too, since author Steve Hendricks goes back thousands of years. Basically, the history of fasting is a dialectic between those who over do it vs those who approach it with moderation: doesn't matter if it's India, China, classical Greece, early and Medieval Christianity, or the latest purveyor of bro science with his keto and intermittant fasting youtube channel. Oh, and the subtitle is pretty much the only "poor" factor in this book. Hendricks does some serious research and is a good writer.
Be forewarned, Martinez goes on long digressions about how hard a book it was to write compared to his previous one.
How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, a terrific and highly readable story of Buddhism's migration to North America, a history that goes back to the Revolutionary period, which was a surprise to the great author Rick Fields when he began researching this boo,
I don't know why I am drawn to books about Haiti, which are almost universally depressing. But here's another: What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam Chancy. It took me a few chapters to get the flow of the book, which shifts perspectives from one person to the next in the days or weeks before or after Haiti's devastating 2010 January earthquake. I thought at first we'd be following all of the people, which would have been confusing - too many really - but it worked very well to follow each person for 5-30 pages and then loop back in time and start with the next person. Poor Haiti. It's a remarkable book that communicates the collective and individual tragedies equally well.
You can't leave the office on the last day of finals and go on an impulse borrowing jaunt at the public library, see this book, and not check it out: Robert Marbury (of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists) is the author. Taxidermy Art, indeed. It's deeply weird. Incredibly niche. And here at my home, Mrs. Ismitje (with whom I shared some of the images) sincerely hopes I turn it back in tomorrow.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a recent translation of the Old English classic that reads better in this version by translator Simon Armitage than it did in the one I read in college.
The Southpaw - Mark Harris "Or he would have a book such as 'Moby Dick' concerning the white whale, and we begun to read it together, Holly and me, but we never come to the whale so I give it up."
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It's a Barnes & Noble Classic novel. It's a grim tale of the early 20th Century meatpacking industry in Chicago. This book is my introduction to Sinclair's works. Should be interesting.
In 1988, I came to the United States for college as a foreign student. My college was located in San Francisco in the great state of "Montana". Because I was in "Montana" where their local team San Francisco 49ers was big, I became very curious about American football. In fact, I ran into Joe Montana on my first semester, but I did not know who he was at the time. Instead, I could only think of John Elway (I was rooting against him).... even though I was in "Montana". The Broncos went to the previous two Super Bowls, and I watched them at home. So even before I stepped foot in the United States, I thought John Elway was the best football player in the world. His dad Jack Elway happened to be coaching Stanford in the late 1980's. So he appeared in the newspaper all the time. Somewhere between 1988 and 1990, Jack Elway went to coach football in Italy. That was how I heard of American football in Italy. This book had nothing to do with John Elway nor his father. What I think of it? It did not have a good storyline, but John Grisham made it interesting. It was just a story about a former NFL player playing in Italy.