The Maine Woods – Henry David Thoreau “Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.”
The Second Life of Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton. a really solid crime novel. Title character in federal pen, gets released due to the machinations of a well-connected gangster, but learns that "mobility is not the same thing as freedom" and soon finds himself conducting hits for said gangster. He doesn't like it, but appears to have no choice. Until, that is...
The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan An interesting history of the world with the emphasis placed on the empires and nations of the Silk Road. This has a bit more contemporary history than I wanted, but it was still worthwhile.
Brewster's Millions - George Barr McCutcheon An enjoyable, quick read. Never seen any of them, but this has been remade into several movies around the world.
these have to be the most misleading covers ever. they correspond to the book's reputation but if the heroine's sex life is related it is in done so in a way that can only be called chaste, and with an emphasis on the emotional, not the physical. I had never paid any attention to Mirbeau, the reputation of this book and perhaps the assonance of his name (that reminded me of Gustave Moreau) made me imagine it was just an avant garde histoire de cul, a cross between Huysman and Nin. in fact it's more like Zola with the political fury of Vallès. the writing is excellent at the beginning but becomes more facile as it goes on, as Moreau is driven along by his convictions (he was an anarchist). but all in all something I was very happy to discover and I will definitely read all his work I can get my hands on.
John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row I've enjoyed the short novels in this collection and hope to get to East of Eden later this summer.
i was born and raised in salinas ca, so naturally i had my fill of steinbeck by about the age of 10. fu,,y thing about salinas and steinbeck - everyone hated him while he was alive but now that the town realizes that besides iceberg lettuce one nobel prize winning novelist is all that the town has produced or will ever, EVERYTHING from schools and libraries to tea shops and pop warner football teams are named after him.
Just finished: I agree with just about everything in here (it's Leonard Cassuto's The Graduate School Mess in case the image does nor show up). I am particularly concerned because our latest institutional strategic plan targets Tier I research status and an accompanying expansion of the doctoral student population, with no plan on how to help those people get jobs on the other end.
Quick read. Was semi-attracted by the promise of scariness but after finishing it I'm intrigued about whether it will reward rereading.
The Shape of Water - Andrea Camilleri Yet another crime and mystery series I had been meaning to try out. Not bad. In time I'll probably continue on. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne I read an abridged version of this as a kid that I loved. Not sure why it took me so long to read the original. I liked this.
History of the United States of America During the First Administration of James Madison – Henry Adams "Rarely in American history has any particular Congress been held in high popular esteem, but seldom if ever was a Congress overwhelmed by contempt so deep and general as that which withered the Eleventh in the midst of its career."
Boone -- Robert Morgan I was staying with a friend but she was sick and went to bed early and I found this on her bookshelf. She must have 20 bookshelves in her house and I had to pick this book. For the life of me, I cannot understand why I picked this book, why the author chose to write it, or why Boone was so monumentally famous so early in this country's history. Morgan spends his introduction listing the current state of Boone literature, and finds most of the works to be pretty good, and then he goes ahead and writes this book. Until Mark Twain came around, Boone was possibly the 2nd or 3rd most famous American after Ben Franklin and perhaps George Washington, and until Lincoln, more had been written about Daniel Boone than any other American. I don't get it. I've known this about Boone for decades now, and even after reading this book, I still don't see why he was so famous. Maybe I read the wrong biography...
The Journal of Major George Washington A young major in the Virginia militia, 21 year old George Washington heard of Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie's desire to send a delegation to the French in the Ohio Valley to tell them to cease and desist all expansion in the region. Washington decided he wanted to volunteer for said mission and this is the account he made when he returned. He didn't know he was going to have to write out his report but Dinwiddie recognized an earnestness and charm in the young major, made him write the report and then published it as a pamphlet. This was one of the most widely read pamphlets of the colonial era and it helped create the legend of Washington, for the official French response, printed in this pamphlet, helped to create positive public sentiment for the French and Indian War.
The Cold Dish - Craig Johnson Yet another mystery series I had been meaning to try out. While I know these books and the TV show are quite popular, I thought that this was only okay.
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number -- Jacobo Timerman One of the formative books of my college career, this is the book I have assigned my son to read this summer, so it was a good time to reread this story of journalist Jacobo Timerman's kidnapping/arrest and torture during Argentina's Dirty War of the 70s. Except that my memory is fvcked. In the service, I read many an account of torture and prisoners of war, I've read numerous dissident memoirs and of course, Gulag Archipelago and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Other than Day in the Life, this was the first I read. And the reason I wanted my son to read this was because, after reading 1984, I wanted him to see the totalitarian interrogation in action: Interrogator: Confess. Victim: To what? I've done nothing wrong! Interrogator: You know what you did. Confess! And so on. I thought this is where I first came upon this in my readings. I would have bet good money this is where I first came upon this in my readings. And yet it wasn't. Timerman recounts very little of the actual interrogations he faced preferring to put it into the larger context of Argentina's dysfunction, anti-Semitism just 30 years after the Nuremburg trials, and the totalitarian mind. Overall, it is a much stronger work for this emphasis, but it does make me question what I remember about my college and high school years. What memories of mine are faulty? It's frightening to think about....
finished this fathers' day present a few days ago. i don't usually go in for contemporary literature (i know this was written 20 years ago but bryson definitely breaks my golden rule of reading only authors fifty years dead; he may indeed still be alive) but it was a breezy read. the "laugh out loud" blurbs from the critics are misleading: i did chuckle audibly a few times but a good part of the humor was almost annoying - trying too hard and too often to be funny and not succeeeding. but the best of the book is when it gets sentimental, which bryson generally manages without getting maudlin. and when he likes something he is very good at getting you to like it too... though when he dislikes something he generally succeeds in getting you to dislike him. a good book to read in these brexiting times, a solid reminder that britain without europe wasn't all some cracked it up to be: had it been prominent on high street bookshelves 3 months ago i doubt things could have gone as they did. personally the read was all worth it for the prologue set in 1974, which mutatis mutandis describes in surprising detail my first visit and impressions of england four years later.
Here's a good (and relativley short) book by a torture victim whose torturers were not, in their minds, at least, representing a totalitarian force. The Question, by Algerian journalist Henri Alleg. This edition is just a bit over 100 pages, including the new afterword. Read it on vacation once. Since the vacation was mostly spent in Nebraska, it wasn't that bad of a read.
Finished this: The "a biography" caught my eye, and reminded me of a book I read a few years ago that looked at the way Americans looked at Jesus over time (which characteristics appealed to people as determined by popular hymns, artwork, tracts, sculpture, and the like). I hoped this would consider the ways in which Mormons have looked at Jesus over time, and it does, but not in the way I anticipated. Instead each chapter treats a variant of how Mormons conceptualize/think of Jesus, and several chapters stand out. I liked the chapter on how/when Mormon prophets received/claimed to receive revelation from which deity (Father/Son, Elohim/Jehovah, versions of The Lord), another on Christ as elder brother (and what that implied), another on Jesus' marriage status, and a final one on Christ's race/skin tone. Good work from George Mason University's John Turner, from a Harvard U. Press. Recommended. Even much of the history with which I was familiar gets some novel treatment. The audience for this is a little tricky because some LDS readers will dislike his discussion of sacred stuff, while some folks who dislike the Mormons will dislike his even-handedness. It hit just about right for me.