Sometimes I make myself laugh...

At the utterly random reading I do. Case in point, the varied assortment of books that were waiting for me when I got back from my long weekend in D.C. (WHOO! Amazing as always!)



Lincoln Child, The Third Gate - I am sure I had requested this one because going on plane trips always makes me think of / want an Preston-Child (Agent Pendergast) book, and the latest one must not have been available. So I settled for a just-Child one. (Thanks for the picture, Amazon!)





Karen Engelmann, The Stockholm Octavo - I have no idea what this book is, much less why I requested it. Times review, maybe?





 




Tupelo Hassman, Girlchild - this is supposed to be excellent, I am so excited.
   




Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn - I think this was something that was mentioned when I went to a talk by book review editors, and someone asked what was one of the books that they really loved this year...
 




Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru - came across this somewhere, and I just always love books on the history/complexity of racial definitions.
 




Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall - this one I just want to re-read so that I'll remember the first half of the story when I finally get Bring Up the Bodies in my hands.




Jane, Duchess of Northumberland (hilarious - really??) and Colin Stimpson, illustrator, The Poison Diaries
As best I can tell, an illustrated fiction story about a poisoner, based on the research of an actual poison-gardener? It's confusing, but I can figure it out later...looks cool for now!

Read:

Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale (UK printing)

Very easy-to-read non-fiction piece about a notorious divorce case (one of the earliest after a civil divorce was made accessible to the general public in England in 1858), in which a woman's diary, containing either her feverish fantasies or the (semi-)details of an actual affair were the cornerstone of the case.

Nice look at both the people and events (leading up to, during, and after the trial) and also at the wider context. I think in part this was necessary to make up for a limited field of action and evidence, but extended sections on other cases, in particular, do not feel out of place or like interruptions and they add to the overall impact of the book. I also appreciated, and I think non-specialist audiences would, too, that there are no footnotes, and simply un-numbered endnotes at the back.

It's not a great work of scholarship, but it's fun and easy.

I'd like to check out her other books at some point - The Queen of Whale Cay and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (fiction and nonfiction, respectively, I think?).

more quick updates

Finished Roger Williams: the Church and the State by Edmund S. Morgan (2006/2007 edition) over the weekend (including a 4:30 a.m. drunk reading in bed session - I woke up around 7am with the lights on and the book still in my hand, whoops!) and then read Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist last night (super quick read).

Not too much going on...

...in my reading life - or real life, for that matter!  Quiet week, which I think I needed, so that was good.  Didn't get all that much reading done, though, since I mostly just curled up with my overstuffed DVR and old episodes of The Wire (new life goal: to be able to say "sheeeeeeeee-it" convincingly).

Library is making me return The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, by David Armitage, which is a bummer, since it's wicked interesting.  It also, at the same time, totally puts me to sleep, which is weird.  So I've been enjoying reading it for 20 minutes or so before bed - it's thought-provoking and fascinating, and then suddenly I'm out like a light.  Perfect-o!  Plus, I think Armitage is married to Joyce Chaplin, who is my academic girl-crush, so that's just kinda cool.

But I guess someone else at Harvard must be having trouble sleeping, and doesn't want to rely on melatonin, because it's been recalled.  Oh, well - more time to plow through Season 4!





Finished Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which I've been meaning to read for a year or two (two, I think?), since it was listed in a "great books for Halloween" piece in Real Simple.  Finally got around to it, and I guess it was fine, but I really didn't find it very compelling.  The introductory notes said that it's been made into a movie twice (The Haunting and then House on Haunted Hill - although the author of the introduction said not to bother with the 1999 version, but I'm looking now, and it's got Taye Diggs, so, can you go wrong?) and that kind of makes sense - it seemed like a very visual book, but I just wasn't feeling the atmosphere, and was having a hard time picturing the setting.  But a haunted house is definitely appropriate for Halloween, so it was a good book for cuddling under my down comforter, heating pad at my feet, and reading with the faint sounds of little kids shrieking coming through the windows...
I also hadn't realized that Shirley Jackson is the same person who wrote that short story "The Lottery" which I read in middle school or high school (high school, maybe?) - AND which was a tv movie or something with Keri Russell, who I kinda loved because when I first saw her in something it was some God-awful teen soap (it was basically the O.C. before the O.C. was created, I think), but she had gorgeous, crazy curls.

So, yeah - that was Sunday, Monday I drank and thought about fun books, and on Tuesday or Wednesday I actually "sold" some paperbacks to the Harvard Bookstore, earning me a whopping $9 and change in store credit.  Totally worth it, even if it wasn't super lucrative: I'm sure to use the credit sooner rather than later (like on the days when I end up buying books because I'm waiting for Hong Kong to cook my take-out spicy green beans), and it got a stack of "never going to read again" books off my floor).  And now it's Friday, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through my other "scary" book that I started in the week before Halloween, The Prayer of the Night Shepherd.  I don't know exactly why I keep reading these Merrily Watkins books by Phil Rickman.  The mysteries aren't that mysterious, the literature ain't exactly great, and each time I finish one I think "huh, well, hmm" or something along those totally damned with faint praise lines.  They're really pretty much microwave popcorn.  Fills you up and kills some time, and at least it's not total junk, but it's not really great for you either.  But I am rather fond of the characters - and in this one we're dealing with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a group calling itself The White Company, so that's fun.  Except the real White Company is so much better!

History for Non-History Majors

Came across the following short piece by Gordon Wood, recently - some nice points, and a good counterpoint to Limerick (see "Dancing with Professors" page, left):
"In Defense of Academic History Writing," The Art of History column, Perspectives On History (American Historical Association), April 2010.

I actually came across it while trying to track something down for the new page I just added to this blog, "History for Non-History Majors."  The title of the page is, of course, a reference to the chemistry-for-non-science-majors class I appreciated so much at UMass.  The professor (who looked like Alfred Hitchcock, especially in profile, as he stalked about the stage in front of the projection screen) passed around a bottle of goldschlager to illustrate the difference between a suspension and a solution and screened Simpsons clips to introduce classes on nuclear technology.  It was terribly simple, for the most part, and incredibly fun.  Along the way, I managed to learn some things.  Not a lot, but, then, I wasn't meant to.  The professor's stated goal was to have his students leave the class at the end of the semester with a more general knowledge of chemistry and science, and how it applied to our day to day lives.  For example, that we be able to come to informed decisions about the pros and cons of different energy sources, and which were best suited for our respective communities, were, say a wind farm or nuclear power plant be proposed in our home states.  Or how relatively dangerous the irradiation and chemical treatment (pesticides) of supermarket produce might be.

I think the books I will slowly be listing in the History for Non-History Majors page serve the same general function, leaving readers better informed about history than they were before they started.  And entertained, hopefully!
If any one of the small handful of you out there who read this has any suggestions, please let me know - especially since I realize what I consider 'light' and 'accessible' history might not appear the same to everyone...

Back in the saddle!

Okay, been a while since I last posted, apparently, but also been crazy busy, so not too much to catch up on.  I will think about it, but I am pretty sure that I have only read two books since then, since I haven't had much spare time.  Both were on the bus to & from NYC this weekend (note to self, I need to plan on at least two books, each way, for future trips to Manhattan, because staring out the window at the side of the road gets really boring, really fast).  So: 
On Sunday (4/18) I started reading Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island.  I don't know.  I mean, it was a decent twist that I didn't necessarily see coming, but I just couldn't quite get into it.  Now, that could have been in part because I was wicked uncomfortable in the Bolt Bus' seat, so I was focused more on how long it would take to get to NY, and then to Renita's, and - always & of course - how supremely pissed off I was at my classmates, who turn in CRAPTASTIC papers WICKED LATE, but I think part of it was the story, too.  It seemed a little over-written, maybe - like, yeah, we get it.  Period dialogue.  Hep.  Whatever; it was fun enough, and a good bus read insofar as I didn't have to focus too too much.  It's interesting that it's a movie, because it sort of felt when I was reading it like it would be a better movie than book - there are a lot of visual (sensual, really, including sounds) elements that might translate better in that medium.  And I liked Gone, Baby, Gone the movie and loved Mystic River the movie, so that may be saying something (I also read the first page or so of Mystic River, the book, and Gone, Baby, Gone, the book, in the back of Shutter Island, and was like "eh" - if I had picked those books up in a store, and read those first pages, I doubt I would have bought them (Mystic River, in particular, whereas the movie sucked me right in).

For the bus ride back I borrowed a book by Sophie Kinsella from R, Twenties Girl.  It took a little getting into, but then I really enjoyed it.  I might have gotten into it a little too much, actually, given that I was on a bus.  I definitely caught myself smirking at a couple parts, almost giggling a few other other places, and actually getting a little choked up here and there (without giving anything away, a woman in her late twenties [I think?  maybe early thirties?  don't remember] bonds with the ghost of her great aunt (died at 105, but haunts as a twenty-something from 1927 or thereabouts - gets a little emotional in places!).  But then I would remember that the guy sitting next to me had been all chatty and then he TURNED HIS BODY away to take a phone call in which he was like "yeah, I should be home around 6" - so, unless he had a really tight bond with his male roomate, I was not going to worry about making a bad impression!  More than a little fluffy, yeah, but fun, and while the insights into live & love, etc., were pretty facile, I can certainly always use a reminder that you can't just will someone into liking you, and if you like someone more than he likes you, you just need to f***ing get over it and move on.  Points for being realistic, I guess, Ms. Kinsella (although, feel like that is a pseudonym?).  Definitely liked it way, way more than the Shopaholic books, not that I didn't borrow one or two of those from R as well...they were always good for amusing myself while I waited for her to get out of the shower or something (unlike d**m Far Pavilions which is a mother-f***ing TOME of a book).

Started Jack Weatherford's The Secret History of the Mongol Queens last night; so far, so awesome!  Really enjoying everything of it I have read so far - it seems to be decent history, at least Weatherford writes with an authoritative voice, but there aren't any footnotes or end-notes, so it's def. kind of history-lite.  But he clearly seems to know his stuff, and it feels like maybe this (Genghis Khan's daughters, etc.) he came across researching something else, and I trust that kind of organic source of "inspiration," as it were.  I am assuming there is either a bibliography or a bibliographic essay at the back, and I will be okay with that.  Hoping there is, because this really makes me want to go read more - especially the Secret History of the Mongols, the semi-contemporary chronicle of Genghis' life, rise to power, and empire, if Weatherford can recommend a good translation.  These chicks were totally kinda awesome, although I think part of that may just be a reflection of what f***-ups Genghis' sons were.  But I do want to know more.  I also kinda want to ride a horse into battle, but I will settle for going home and listening to The Animals, because "It's My Life" makes me think of Genghis Khan for some reason.  Well, the reference to sable is the reason.  Ooohh...Brill does an edition of Secret History of the Mongols - bet that's decent.

So annoying.  N just said he thought "Khan" would not be a good name for any future sons of mine / nephews of his.  Although we both agreed it would be better than "Genghis."  I bet M would back me up on this...or try to steal my idea - it's a race to see who has a little baby Aristeia first!  (Oh, interesting: the Mongols seem to have had a similar concept, baatar).

Latest from NYT Books email

Got one of the Books emails from the NYTimes just now.  Need to remember: The History of White People (history, Nell Irwin Painter), The Irresistible Henry House (Lisa Grunwald), Safe From the Neighbors (Steve Yarbrough), Pirate Latitudes (Michael Crichton), and Mrs. Adams In Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon (history, Michael O'Brien).

Patience, thy name is sure as hell not mine...

The library STILL hasn't ordered the new Richard Archer book, As If An Enemy's Country, so I went ahead and requested it, so hopefully whoever is in charge of ordering history books will get right on that.  In the process of checking the ISBN number for Enemy's Country, for the request form, I saw on the book's Amazon page that Jack Rakove's latest, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America, is coming out on May 11; will definitely need to keep that one in mind as well.  Can't wait for either!!!

More books I should read...

Was on my way to get lunch today when A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game, by Jenny Uglow, caught my eye - and not just because of the author's name!  Honestly, it was mostly that the title amused me, and I am sure if the book had had a different title or cover I might not have even stopped to look at it (the Restoration has never been a hugely favorite period of mine), but I did stop, and I think I will need to add it to my list of books to read...  Definitely a library book, though; it's been out since November of 2009, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be in the Harvard libraries somewhere, and it's definitely far enough from my fields that it's not worth paying for.  I still have my eye on that pre-Revolutionary Boston book by Richard Archer, though!  And that could be worth buying...but probably not only a month out, though - I should at least wait until I can get it cheaper, if not for it to be in paperback.  But library would be best; it's still not in Hollis, but hopefully soon, or I will request it - if I don't give in and buy it first!

Random musings...

Just got my monthly email from Yale University Press with their latest offerings in law/legal works.  One, Defying the Odds: The Tule River Tribe's Struggle for Sovereignty in Three Centuries, by Geyla Frank and Carole Godlberg, looks quite interesting.  Remember to look for it in Hollis after the 3/30/2010 publication date.  Finished The Fourth Bear, by Jasper Fforde, this weekend.  I enjoyed it, as I enjoy all his books, but I don't find the Nursery Crimes series as interesting or funny as the Thursday Next books; there may be a third Nursery Crimes book out there, but I don't think I'm in any hurry to read it.