Piling up books I'm reading (or have or plan to read), I noticed several of their titles could be lined up to make some sort of sense. (Perennial thanks! to Kirsten who first pointed this game out to me.)
Le Road Trip: An Anthropologist on Mars, A Tale of Love and Darkness. No Time to Wave Goodbye: 365 Days Lost in the Cosmos.
Le Road Trip is a beautiful book by Vivian Swift, who I met on Steve's blog, Shadows and Light. Thank you for your generous gift of this book, Vivian!
It arrived on one of the warmer of our polar vortex days, when it was only -15 (at -25, the USPS stopped delivering)––a perfect time to look at lovely pictures of Somewhere Else.
The book's subtitle is A Traveler's Journal of Love and France, and it's the France of croissants and chateaux––vin rouge not gilets jaunes––captured by Vivian in charming watercolors.
Oliver Sacks always tells amazing stories about humans and our brains, so I'm looking forward to reading An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, which follows seven people with neurological disorders.
I'm taking a break from A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz.
It's good and meaty, but it's hard going for me because I barely know the politics and people behind his childhood in British occupied Palestine. I want to go back to it, but I think I'll read some of his other shorter books and essays first, to get more background.
I'm especially interested in his teenage years in a kibbutz.
No Time to Wave Goodbye is about the London children who were bundled off to the countryside at the beginning of WWII, for their safety. Lots of bits of interviews with the now-old kids themselves.
Turns out the English countryside wasn't bucolic for many of the unaccompanied young children--including six-year-old Michael Caine, now Sir Michael Caine, whose host family locked him in a dark cupboard.
365 Days is a memoir by Ronald J. Glasser, MD, who served in a US military hospital in Japan during the Vietnam War.
A pediatrician, his job was to take care of the children of military and government officials, but, he said, he “soon realized that the troopers they were pulling off those medevac choppers were only children themselves.”
When I look at teenagers, I like to figure out how long ago they were 10 years old. For a 17 year old soldier, you only have to subtract 7 years.
I started Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983) by Walker Percy last night, while I ate veggie burgers at White Castle after work.
(That hat I'm wearing is the best hat! It's fake fur, and it's warm. I looked up the brand, Pandemonium, Seattle, and it cost $82 new.
And it seemed to be new when I got it at the thrift store (of course) for $3.99.)
White Castle's colors match the book!
Verdict: Disappointing. Self-referential, cute, and unreliable. You can't trust an author who asks,
Adding to the list:
Federalist Paper No. 10-- "among the most highly regarded of all American political writings", but I've never read any of the Federalist papers. Now I want to because Michael posted about Columbia's core curriculum, which includes No. 10.
The FPs are all online here, at Congress.gov, among other places, which might be handy because I think these .gov sites go down if the government closes.
Le Road Trip: An Anthropologist on Mars, A Tale of Love and Darkness. No Time to Wave Goodbye: 365 Days Lost in the Cosmos.
Le Road Trip is a beautiful book by Vivian Swift, who I met on Steve's blog, Shadows and Light. Thank you for your generous gift of this book, Vivian!
It arrived on one of the warmer of our polar vortex days, when it was only -15 (at -25, the USPS stopped delivering)––a perfect time to look at lovely pictures of Somewhere Else.
The book's subtitle is A Traveler's Journal of Love and France, and it's the France of croissants and chateaux––vin rouge not gilets jaunes––captured by Vivian in charming watercolors.
Oliver Sacks always tells amazing stories about humans and our brains, so I'm looking forward to reading An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, which follows seven people with neurological disorders.
I'm taking a break from A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz.
It's good and meaty, but it's hard going for me because I barely know the politics and people behind his childhood in British occupied Palestine. I want to go back to it, but I think I'll read some of his other shorter books and essays first, to get more background.
I'm especially interested in his teenage years in a kibbutz.
No Time to Wave Goodbye is about the London children who were bundled off to the countryside at the beginning of WWII, for their safety. Lots of bits of interviews with the now-old kids themselves.
Turns out the English countryside wasn't bucolic for many of the unaccompanied young children--including six-year-old Michael Caine, now Sir Michael Caine, whose host family locked him in a dark cupboard.
365 Days is a memoir by Ronald J. Glasser, MD, who served in a US military hospital in Japan during the Vietnam War.
A pediatrician, his job was to take care of the children of military and government officials, but, he said, he “soon realized that the troopers they were pulling off those medevac choppers were only children themselves.”
When I look at teenagers, I like to figure out how long ago they were 10 years old. For a 17 year old soldier, you only have to subtract 7 years.
I started Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983) by Walker Percy last night, while I ate veggie burgers at White Castle after work.
(That hat I'm wearing is the best hat! It's fake fur, and it's warm. I looked up the brand, Pandemonium, Seattle, and it cost $82 new.
And it seemed to be new when I got it at the thrift store (of course) for $3.99.)
White Castle's colors match the book!
Verdict: Disappointing. Self-referential, cute, and unreliable. You can't trust an author who asks,
"Why is it no other species but man gets bored?Have you never met a dog?
Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep."
Adding to the list:
Federalist Paper No. 10-- "among the most highly regarded of all American political writings", but I've never read any of the Federalist papers. Now I want to because Michael posted about Columbia's core curriculum, which includes No. 10.
The FPs are all online here, at Congress.gov, among other places, which might be handy because I think these .gov sites go down if the government closes.
