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Fucking awesome zombie novel!
For the last two years or so I haven't read fiction at all. So when Mike pressed me to read Feed by Mira Grant, I was skeptical of my ability to enjoy it. I shouldn't have been worried. Feed is the best zombie story I've ever read or watched or heard. It's quite simply brilliant ( Read more... ) -
Weather watching
Blame It on the Rain: How the Weather Has Changed History, by Laura Lee, is a weird little book. On the one hand, it's full of interesting facts about how weather has influenced wars and other human endeavors -- okay, mostly wars -- since the Athenians and Persians duked it out a few thousand years ago. My problem with it is the writing style. I ( Read more... ) -
A random library find
I occasionally browse my favorite shelves in the library, looking for odd things I've never heard of. Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever by Hal Hellman is one of those. Newton v. Liebniz, Cope v. Marsh, and Freeman v. Mead are a few of the feuds covered. It's an interesting book. Like, I didn't know that Galileo was ( Read more... ) -
I want that half-hour of my life back.
Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders by Paul Maliszewski is a horrible book. The title sounds fascinating, doesn't it? And yet I can't slog my way any further through the author's bragging about a con he pulled. It's supposed to be funny. It might be if it were only two pages instead of half the book. I quit ( Read more... ) -
Okay, so I don't ALWAYS love Bill Bryson.
Shakespeare: The World As Stage is a biography of the bard. Which I was and am completely uninterested in. I like Shakespeare's works quite a lot, but I don't really care about his life. So this book was kind of boring for me. It was very well-written, and I enjoyed the parts about what life was like in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, but for ( Read more... ) -
My Bill Bryson love continues unabated.
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States is thoroughly brilliant. It's fifteen years old, but it holds up extremely well. The book is officially about language, but it's more like a history of this country with some language thrown in. It's wonderful. Bryson goes off on all these weird little side ( Read more... ) -
I just read a book on obituaries. Yes, really.
The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson is... interesting. I had no idea that there are people in this world obsessed with obits, much less that they have a newsgroup and an annual convention. Fascinating. Johnson is a fan, and a professional writer of things besides obituaries. For ( Read more... ) -
Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History
Ellen M. Plante reveals all the different facets of life during 19th-century American women -- clothes, home decor, motherhood, weddings, old age, and so forth. Plante quotes a lot from popular advice manuals and magazines of the day, such as Godey's Lady's Book. It's interesting, but the writing style isn't particularly engaging. Also, just for ( Read more... ) -
The History of White People
Nell Irvin Painter, a professor of American history at Princeton, wrote this about the development of racism in white culture. Painter is African-American, and I found it incredibly interesting to read her take on white supremacy across the ages. Apparently the real start of "whiteness" as a self-definition was during the Enlightenment. Painter ( Read more... ) -
Moon
Mike and I just watched Moon. It's science fiction, about a guy who's alone on the moon as part of a robotic mining colony. It's fucking amazing. I'm in awe of the lead actor now. Sam Rockwell. I highly, highly recommend this. (I wish I could tell you more, but there's no way I'm spoiling the movie for anyone.)