No book review posted last week, dear reader, thanks to a number of professional and person obligations, all of which were delightful, but none of which permitted me the time to finish the book I'd started. Thursday night we had our last JV football game of the season - a barnburner of a 50-45 loss to Maranatha. Considering we were without our ( Read more... )

With the grading period coming to a close, football kicking into playoff mode (our last regular season game is this Friday - we play for the league title after a heartbreaking last-second loss Friday), and our houseguest heading back to his own digs to continue his convalescence, this past week didn't look hold much time for reading.  So when bewcastle ( Read more... )

Back on schedule, dear reader, despite a stack of essays that needed to be graded, and narrative grades that needed completing.  I read a chunk on the bus to our Homecoming game (a 45-7 victory that was not as close as the score indicated - we let the entire JV team play some minutes in the second half, during which the clock ran without the usual ( Read more... )

You may recall, dear reader, that I resolved last week to begin reading.  Not that I don't read now, but e-mails from concerned parents and essays from young students don't quite cut it as a steady diet.  No, I resolved to read a book every week, and post my review here to my LiveJournal as a goad to stick to my guns.  My putative schedule was to ( Read more... )

So, I recently finished Colin Wells' A Brief History of History, a survey of the evolution of the discipline of history from its origins with Herodotus and Thucydides, through the Roman and medieval worlds, and into the modern era.  It's a lively survey with some thought-provoking big ideas, and while I may quibble here and there, I found it both ( Read more... )

It seems like it's been ages since I last did a LiveJournal update - Facebook quizzes seem to be eating all my social networking time!  The contrasts between Facebook and LiveJournal, and the utility of each venue for particular aspects of social networking, are fascinating to contemplate.  Facebook is better suited to the short personal update, ( Read more... )

So, The Guardian has published a list of "1,000 Novels Everybody Must Read".  Yep.  One thousand.  As in one a week for 19 years, and never mind the non-fiction or the new-fiction or the anything else.  Except reading The Guardian I suppose...

But if you're as stunningly well-read as the acerbically worldly-wise staffers of the Guardian, you've ( Read more... )

So, I went book shopping last week down on Third Street Promenade with bewcastle , bearing the gift cards I received over the holidays.  We first stopped at the Borders, and discovered that they were closing that store - all stock 40% off!  I had a $25.00 gift card.  I spend considerably more than that.  After depositing our loot in the car, we headed over ( Read more... )