I kept borrowing Ned Sublette's The World that Made New Orleans before trips to that city, but never got around to reading it until I bought it. I was looking for a good travel book, something that would give context to the city, like Elizabeth Nash's book about Madrid. Instead, it was more like Richard Fletcher's Moorish Spain, an in-depth look at ( Read more... )

Even though reading about Benjamin Franklin as a kid is pretty much what got me into reading history for fun, I never had the urge to read any of the Founding Father doorstops. Then I learned that Christopher Hitchens had written a short! biography of Thomas Jefferson, so Jon and I read it together, sitting side-by-side. (which totally disgusted ( Read more... )

Apparently LJ changed such that you can't make future posts any more grr.

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I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running partly bc my boyfriend lurves Murakami but his fiction is too weird for me, partly bc Dr. Froshling told me to, but mostly bc it was cheap on Audible at some point. It took me a while to start it, then I loved it, then I had to stop listening bc he was describing what it's like to run in Boston and ( Read more... )

Poll

Before we went to Gettysburg, one of my smartest cow orkers recommended Shelby Foote's Stars in the Their Courses. I barely finished The Killer Angels in time, so I never got to it, but when I was prepping for our trip to Fredericksburg/Chancellorsville, I thought Foote's The Longest Journey might be a good overview of the campaigns in the area. It ( Read more... )

I wish I could read the New Year's resolution post I'd've written a year ago today, if I'd actually written one last year, bc it would be hilarious. I never imagined how my life would change. I fulfilled a lifelong dream of climbing a technical peak in the Himalayas -- and discovered that it's not all it's cracked up to be. My girlfriend dumped me ( Read more... )

1) Willpower, Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney
2) New Orleans: A Cultural History, Louise McKinney
3) Child of Fire, Harry Connolly
4) Daughter of the Blood, Anne Bishop (re-read)
5) If It Had Happened Otherwise, ed. J. C. Squire
6) Cynl Cvrepvat, Deborah Addington
7) The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor
8) Game of Cages, Harry Connolly
9) Boomerang ( Read more... )

Gang Leader for a Day is the latest in a long line of books I've read this year that were about something different than I expected. I thought it'd be the story of the notebook of data Sudhir Venkatesh got from the treasurer of a crack-dealing gang in the Chicago projects, as mentioned in Freakonomics. Instead, it's the story behind how Venkatesh ( Read more... )

I could feel bad that I didn't read a single book while I was gone - while Jon read books about Thermopylae and the Civil War - or I could note that I finished two challenging audiobooks while I was there and maybe my brain is fatigued. I read less crep these days - mostly bc I don't have the patience - but my serious reading isn't that much higher ( Read more... )