Here are the books, magazine articles, newspapers and lavatory rhymes I’m currently reading. Follow the links to notes about reading the book, buying the book, burning the book, using the book as a sofa leg, recommendations, warnings, that kind of drivel.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
xx pages
These are the books, articles, Cliff’s notes and grafitti I’ve read, listed in the order I read them.
Occasionally I made notes on them when I driveled; links lead to the notes. Where there are no links, there are no notes. You’re on your own, there.
2 0 0 9 — read 4646 pages
Freedom From Fear, The American People in Depression and War, 1929 – 1945, David M. Kennedy
read 556 of 858 pages
A really huge book densely-packed with details about everything that happened in this fifteen-year period. Good bedtime book.
My War, Andy Rooney
313 pages
Rising From The Rails, Larry Tye
xx pages
The War of the World: Twenty Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, Niall Ferguson
xx of 654 pages
Eight Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, W.Bruce Cameron
xx pages
How To Remodel A Man, W.Bruce Cameron
xx pages
Zoe's Tale, John Scalzi
xx pages
Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux
xx pages
Wry Martinis, Christopher Buckley
xx pages
Freedom Just Around The Corner: A New American History 1585 – 1828, author
xx pages
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America, Stacy Schiff
xx pages
Way Out There In The Blue, Frances Fitzgerald
442 of 499 pages
Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan imagined that American scientific ingenuity would make nuclear weapons obsolete by developing defensive weapons to destroy them: orbiting laser weapons to melt them as they took off, high-flying interceptor rockets to crash into them as they arced into space and began to fall back down on us, and point-defense missiles that would catch the ones that slipped through and were on their way back down. He called this defense our “space shield” and our “umbrella in the sky,” and the press, not entirely unfairly, called it “Star Wars.”
Reagan’s imagination was so vivid that the Soviets thought maybe he had something going, even though it was the opinion of every scientist on earth, with the exception of Edward Teller, no less a barking lunatic in this narrative than in any other, that nobody could build anything remotely like space lasers for decades, and even if somebody did, somebody else could blow it out of the sky pretty easily. But they fell for it anyway. For more than a couple years, the Soviets thought we were building a ballistic missile defense that could work. It was the biggest cold-war bluff ever.
Except that it didn’t work, literally or as a bluff. Literally, it didn’t exist and, like the flying car and space colonies in orbit, it still doesn’t. As a bluff, Reagan shot himself in the foot with his own space laser when the Soviets became so determined to stop us from building orbiting battle stations that they became willing to bargain away half their nuclear arsenal in exchange for our promise not to deploy any of these systems. They would have allowed us to carry out all the research we wanted, which we were doing anyway, but they wanted our solemn word not to deploy space lasers as defensive weapons. In exchange, they would have dismantled half of all the nuclear weapons they actually had.
And Ronald Reagan said no. Well, he sort of had to, didn’t he? Having convinced them that he had this magical shield, he had to continue to act as though it was there and he was unwilling to give it up. And that worked for about six years, and then the Soviets noodled out that we didn’t have this nearly-magical defensive shield and wouldn’t for a long time.
The best part of this story was reading about the various factions fighting for access and dominance over the presidency, and Reagan sitting back in his big comfy chair, taking it all in without responding much to it. He was definitely the “whatever” president.
The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams
xx pages
Rogue Star, Michael Flynn
I bought Rogue Star on a whim. It had a cool-looking cover, it was a work by an established author, I’d never heard of him or his previous book, and the first few pages I read began the story on a ship in space. There’s no surer way to set the hook in my narrow attention span than to start with a ship in space.
The characters were a little too quirky but that’s not a problem for me in the opening chapter. I can keep reading past a few character flaws to see what’s going on; usually, the author develops the characters, the story, or both to the point that I can easily forgive a shaky opening chapter.
The prologue was over and done with in just six pages. Chapter one, by comparison, was twenty-seven pages of numbing political intrigue. What? Where’s the space ship? Where are the lasers? Where’s the barely-clothed Galactic Princess? Instead, there’s a gabby meeting in the White House with the president, and then a gabby board room meeting between a dozen corporate heads that somehow lasts just ten minutes (this is fiction, after all). Bleh. I didn’t buy a science fiction novel to read political intrigue! But, I wanted to give the author, Michael Flynn, a fair chance, so I dutifully plowed all the way to the end of the chapter, then scanned the next chapter to see what I could look forward to.
More wordy intrigue. No space ships. We’re done here.
The Mercury 13, Martha Ackmann
232 pages
In the run-up to the Mercury manned-space program, thirteen women were tested and trained to become “girl astronauts“ until NASA officially set policy that banned women from going into space. A very well-written story I’d never heard before.
For All Mankind, Harry Hurt III
read 268 of 327 pages
Another go at telling the story of putting men on the moon, this time “in their own words.” Not bad, but not all that good.
Googie, Alan Hess,
133 pages
a moderately-illustrated review of the architectural style known as Coffee Shop Modern or, more familiarly, Googie.
All The Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
302 pages
His least bloody novel so far. Really, that’s the first blurb on the back cover: “His least bloody novel!” Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of blood, but it’s not a gorefest. One dollar at Saint Vinnie’s.
No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin
636 pages
Very nicely-written history of the era 1939 – 1945 from the point of view of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
The Unknown Battle of Midway, Alvin Kernan
146 pages
traded one for one on PaperbackSwap.com
Boomsday, Christopher Buckley
318 pages
a surprisingly funny novel about politics
a buck fifty at St. Vinnie’s
Sandra Day O’Connor, Joan Biscupic
read 35 of 338 pages
a pretty dry, boring, awful summary of O’Connor’s asendancy to the supreme court
a buck fifty at St. Vinnie’s
Parting The Waters, America in the King Years, 1954-63, Taylor Branch
read 922 pages
Two dollars at Saint Vinnie’s.
The Wanderer, Fritz Leiber
read 280 of 348 pages
This is pulp science fiction from The Golden Age. Contains the usual cast of characters you expect to find in a Heinlein novel; they all talk like Heinlein characters, too.
finished
The Whole Shebang, Timothy Ferris
read 33 of 312 pages
Ferris summarizes the universe. Makes it look easy, too, the bastard.
One dollar at St. Vincent’s
Apollo, the Race to the Moon, Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox
471 pages
I have a growing collection of books about the Apollo program. This one’s very much unlike the others. It focuses on the cast of thousands who brought the program to life, instead of on the more famously well-known astronauts. Names like Armstrong, Aldrin and Lovell barely make cameo appearances, while others like Kranz and Kraft run throughout the book. Getting to know them and watching them do something they truly loved is the point here. Not so much getting to the moon, but their commitment to doing it.
There are a few names here that will be familiar to you if you grew up in the Space Age: Werner von Braun is probably the one nearly anyone would remember. But even though I was one of those astronaut wanna-bes who took for granted that I’d land a job some day as a rocket pilot, or at least a moon bus driver, there were quite a few names I hadn’t known before that were staggeringly significant to the space program. How could I have ever considered myself a science geek and not known and loved engineers with names like Rocco Petrone and Mad Don Arabian? I hang my head in shame to think of it.
Murray and Cox spent three years interviewing them, and put together this refreshingly personal history, instead of the geek-o-rama you often get when you crack open a book about the space program. Not that this wasn’t a long pleasure cruise on the Empress Of The Nerds. Reading about engineers building the biggest rocket ever and shooting it into space was a geek trip that took me back to my younger days, when I looked up to these professional ubernerds as heroes worthy of worship.
My only disappointment was that, after interviewing more than 150 people over a period of three years, all Murry and Cox could write was one slim volume, when they could have easily gone on and on until it was a boxed set big enough to make Stephen King’s gape in awe. If only I could run across that on the used book shelves at Saint Vinnie’s.
One dollar, Saint Vincent de Paul’s
purchased, update#1, update#2, finished
The Great Derangement, A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, & Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, Matt Taibbi
269 pages
I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up, other than it had a great title and a flashy cover. A quick reading of the first few paragraphs made it look like a rant against Neocon Republicanism, and I felt up for that. There was also lots of cussing, and it only cost me a buck. Good enough to make me want to give Taibbi at least fifty pages of my time.
South, A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage, Ernest Shackleton
read 245 of 347 pages
Shackleton’s expedition to cross Antarctica failed spectactularly when his ship, Endurance, was trapped in sea ice and crushed, stranding the men on the floating ice pack. They towed the ship’s life boats across the ice, camped out for months until it was safe to launch them, then braved a crossing of the open ocean, finally landing on Elephant Island, a barren, frozen rock. Leaving the bulk of the expedition under the shelter of an overturned rowboat, Shackleton took four men in one of the rowboats across open sea to land near a factory where Norwegians boiled whale or seals or some other hapless creatures to make oil out of them. He spent months organizing rescue parties to pick up the scattered parties of his expedition, on Elephant Island and on the other side of Antarctica. I’ve been meaning to read Shackleton’s memoir ever since watching a dramatization of the expedition on television. Found it at St. Vincent de Paul’s thrift store for a dollar.
The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, The First Thousand Days, Harold L. Ickes
read 281 of 705 pages, and I’ve been at it for about six weeks now so I’m taking a break
Ickes was the Secretary of the Interior under FDR and pretty damned pleased with himself, too; his diary provides a very personal look at the inner workings of New Deal politics
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining years, 1933 – 1938, Blanche Wiesen Cook
704 pages
I read about halfway through this volume before I loaned it Mom, who loves any book to do with Eleanor Roosevelt
purchased, started, udpate
2 0 0 8 — read 5737 pages
Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 1, Theodore Roosevelt
read 170 of 277 pages
Teddy’s story of his life is fun up to the point that he becomes active in politics. After that, it becomes a thickly-worded treatise on how he thinks the country ought to be run. I’ll have to come back to this when I’ve got time to study it as closely as a poli sci text.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Charles C. Mann
560 pages
Mann argues that the civilizations of the Americas were at least as advanced as those of Europe. They terraformed their environment to support an agriculture that would feed the thousands of citizens living in eye-poppingly huge urban centers, practiced animal husbandry on a scale not seen anywhere else, and developed sophisticated cultures to rival any other. There is also evidence to suggest native Americans were virtually wiped out after contact with the first explorers from overseas and the disease they brought with them, so that native Americans were in decline long before Europeans began to colonize the New World. Fascinating.
The Future’s So Bright, I Can’t Bear To Look, Tom Tomorrow
a gift from Sean for Christmas 2008, this is a comic-strip summary by a left-leaning cartoonist of the Bush II Years.
Freedom From Fear, The American People in Depression and War, 1929 – 1945, David M. Kennedy
read 380 of 858 pages
I bought this years ago at a used book sale, but started reading it only recently when I began Blanche Wiesen Cook’s biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. At about the same time I also began reading The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes and portions of The Columbia History of North America because my knowledge of events during this time period was spotty. Freedom From Fear is a thorough summary of the period.
Will The Circle Be Unbroken? Studs Terkel
read 57 of 407 pages
Not as interesting as I’d hoped it would be.
1776, David McCullough
294 pages
The battles at Trenton and Princeton in December, 1776, became the turning point of Americas revolutionary war. Until Washington crossed the Delaware and drove the Hessians out of Trenton, just about everybody thought the rebels were beat. After chasing them out of New York and through New Jersey, Lord Howe issued a proclamation telling Americans that if they would pledge allegiance to the King, hed let bygones be bygones, and that seemed to be the end of the revolution. People showed up in droves to sign Howes oath of allegiance. Even the rebels felt they were beat, but Washington didnt, and rallied them for one more attack on Trenton. It was almost a fiasco. The army attempted to cross at three different places, but only Washingtons group was able to get across. He attacked in a raging snowstorm but, even though the Hessians had news that he was coming, their commander flubbed the defense and Washingtons troops kicked them out of town and held it. When the British came back to Trenton, Washington retreated to the other side of the river, left a few guys behind to tend camp fires, rattle pots and pans and otherwise make a lot of noise while he snuck off with the rest of the boys to attack Princeton. He gave the British there a good drubbing, too. It was just a pair of skirmishes in an otherwise long, drawn-out war, but until he chalked up those two victories, Washingtons Continental Army was beaten. A few daring lightening raids, and suddenly militia men were joining Washingtons army in droves. Congress gave him almost unlimited power to prosecute the war. Independence from Britain seemed possible again. But it was touch and go through most of 1776, right up until the very end of the year.
begun, update, finished
Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon,
read 150 of 411 pages
Travel writing’s a funny thing: I can sit all weekend and read Bill Bryson, but I got tired of Blue Highways almost right away.
begun; abandoned
The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, Ann Packer
413 pages
This is the story of Carrie Bell, a heartless wench from Madison, Wisconsin. Carrie could be awfully cruel; I didnt feel all that sympathetic toward her, although I felt as though I should have. As the story opened, she was emotionally distant from her fiance, and thinking she was not going to marry him after all. Then he suffered a neck injury that paralyzed him, and she responded by running away to New York and shacking up with a cipher of a guy who has a cipher of a name, Kilroy. She has lots of hot sex with Kilroy, but never seemed to connect emotionally with him. Actually, she seemed to have trouble connecting emotionally with anybody in the story. And I suppose that was the point, but that made it hard for me to feel anything for her. And yet, I found it hard to put the book down. The Dive From Clausens Pier is not an easy book, but its filled with the kind of people you might know from work or your neighborhood, who talk just like you, and that made me want to read it. I have to admit I liked it, even though I cant say I understood it all, not after just one reading.
finished
The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
498 of the quickest pages you’ll ever read
finished
Will In The World, How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt
read 280 of 390 pages
purchased
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris purchased & began
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1, 1884 – 1933, Blanche Wiesen Cook
500 pages
Eleanor Roosevelt was raised to be the high-society wife of a high-society man. She could have easily spent her whole life dressing up and hosting one lavish soiree after another, but she felt an obligation to others, and especially to other women with a deep need to accomplish something for themselves, as she did. I have to say, I found Cook’s writing a bit dry at times, but Roosevelt’s such a fascinating subject that I kept on reading anyway.
purchased, started, update, update, update, update
Cultural Amnesia, Necessary Memories from History and the Arts , Clive James began
God’s Problem Bart D. Ehrman started
Empire of the Bay, Peter C. Newman
read 416 of 584 pages
Canada was once no more than the private preserve of the Hudson Bay Company, a fur-trading industry. Men came to live years and years in frozen isolation from their home country for the privelege of working for the HBC. Oddly enough, the HBC still exists after morphing into a sort of Montgomery Wards company.
began, update, update
Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse began
The Portable Atheist, Christopher Hitchens began
Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman began, finished
The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams read during attack of insomnia
Art Spiegelman Conversations, Joseph Witek checked out, done
Elephantmen: Wounded Animals, Starking, Ladronn, Moritat and so on, finished
Maus, A Survivor’s Tale, Art Spiegelman, reading
Armed America, Kyle Cassidy, finished
Flushed, How the Plumber Saved Civilization, W. Hodding Carter, checked out, finished
Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
read 102 of 320 pages
So many reviewers described this book as “hilarious.” I read one-hundred two pages of Running With Scissors and I laughed just once, when Burroughs described a rooomful of people goading each other into eating pet food. Other than that, not funny. I dont find other peoples agony funny. I find it painful to watch. And thats why Running With Scissors was painful for me to read. I didn’t think what happened to Burroughs was funny, but much more to the point I didn’t find the way he wrote about it funny, any more than I found it believable. It was a chore to read one-hundred pages of it.
abandoned
Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
388 pages
begun, update, update, update, update, update
Handbook for Freelance Writing, Michael Perry finished
A Long Short War, the Postponed Liberation of Iraq, Christopher Hitchens begun, update, done
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Steve Paulson [published in Salon.com],
an interview with religious sceptic Richard Dawkins
The Atheist Delusion, Steve Paulson [published in Salon.com],
an interview with theologist John Haught, author of God and the New Atheist
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
371 pages
Loved the story, hated the ending.
begun, update, finished
Do You Believe?, Antonio Monda
192 pages
begun, finished
The Great Bridge, David McCullough
562 pages
purchased, began, update, update, update, update [it’s a long book], finished
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
204 pages
began, [no updates]
Slam, Nick Hornby begun, [no updates]
Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian
read about 200 of 411 pages
purchased, abandoned
2 0 0 7
The Imperial Way, Paul Theroux finished
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett began, finished
Close Range – Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx began, update
Northern Lights a.k.a. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman finished
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers purchased, update, finished
Stiff, The Curious Life Of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach finished
The Complete Dennis the Menace, Hank Ketcham, purchased and read
Mornings On Horseback, David McCullough began, update, finished
The Road, Cormac McCarthy began, update, finished
Love My Rifle More Than You, Young and Female in the US Army Kayla Williams finished
From Here to Eternity, James Jones began, update, update, finished
Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Harriman, Patrick McDonnell et al purchased
God Said ‘Ha!’, Julia Sweeney finished
Voyage to the Great Attractor, Alan Dressler began, update
Edwin Hubble, Mariner of the Nebulae, Gale Christianson began, update
God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens finished
John Adams, David McCullough
651 pages
purchased, update, update, finished
John Paul Jones, Evan Thomas began
Sea of Thunder, Evan Thomas began, update, finished
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, Nick Hornby began
Summerland, Michael Chabon finished
Don’t Try This At Home, Witherspoon & Friedman [eds] finished
They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose [ed] finished
A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar finished
Nausicaa, Hayao Miyazaki finished
Captain Craig, E.A. Robinson finished
The Children of Men, P.D. James finished
Good Poems for Hard Times, Garrison Keillor [ed] finished
Choice Cuts, Mark Kurlansky [ed] finished
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks finished
War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges finished
The Winds Of War, Herman Wouk purchased, finished
Reading The River, John Hildebrand finished
Turing’s Delirium, Edmundo Paz Soldan finished
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan finished
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali finished
The Innocent Man, John Grisham finished
The Enormous Room, E.E. Cummings finished
The Big Four, Oscar Lewis finished
WLT: A Radio Romance, Garrison Keillor finished
I Hate Myself And Want To Die, Tom Reynolds finished
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman finished
The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali finished
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon finished
Reading Lolita In Tehran, Azar Nafisi finished
The Android’s Dream, John Scalzi finished
Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris finished
The Outlaw Sea, William Langewiesche finished
A Northern Front, John Hildebrand finished
Mapping The Farm, John Hildebrand finished
The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi began, finished
Old Man’s War, John Scalzi finished, update
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas Ricks finished
2 0 0 6
Truck: A Love Story, Michael Perry
They Marched Into Sunlight, David Maraniss
Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro
Finding Serenity, various
Another Day In The Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
Boomer, Linda Niemann
The Trouble With Tom, Paul Collins
Life of Pi, Yan Martel
Moon Dust, Andrew Smith
Hanging By A Thread, Craig Wilson
Watchdogs of Democracy?, Helen Thomas
A Guide to Trains, David Jackson
Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
Old Twentieth, Joe Haldeman
Numbers Don’t Lie, Terry Bisson
Titan, Ben Bova
A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby
Voyage To The Planets And Beyond
2 0 0 5
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
Crossing the Line, A Bluejacket’s World War II Odyssey, Alvin Kernan
The Speedwell Voyage, A True Story of Survival at Sea, Kenneth Poolman
Subwayland, Adventures in the World Beneath New York, Randy Kennedy
The Talented Mister Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell finished
The Making of The African Queen, Katherine Hepburn
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway finished
The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell
In Retrospect, Robert MacNamara
Take The Cannoli, Stories From the New World, Sarah Vowell
Love Me, Garrison Keillor
Forever, Pete Hamill
2 0 0 4
Homegrown Democrat, Garrison Keillor
House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
Black Hawk Down, A Story of Modern War, Mark Bowden
Left Behind, A Novel of Earth’s Last Days, Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins
Changing Planes, Ursula K. Le Guin
Dude, Where’s My Country? Michael Moore
House of Bush, House of Saud, Craig Unger
Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen
A Man On The Moon, Andrew Chaikin
The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskin
Oh, The Things I Know!, Al Franken
When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden, Bill Maher
American Ground, William Langewiesche
American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph J. Ellis
Darwin’s Radio, Greg Bear
The Lies of George W. Bush, David Corn
The Natural, The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton, Joe Klein
The Right Man, The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, David Frum
Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis
248 pages
Will Rodgers, Ben Yagoda
The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum
Bush At War, Bob Woodward
The Future of Life, Edward O. Wilson
The Monkey In The Mirror, Ian Tattersall
Seabicuit, Laura Hillenbrand
Empire Express, David Haward Bain
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken
To America, Stephen Ambrose
Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
Lost Moon, Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
2 0 0 3
Can Reindeer Fly? The Science of Christmas, Roger Highfield
Prey, Michael Crichton
Ambling Into History, Frank Bruni
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Greg Palast
Firestorm At Peshtigo, Denise Gess and William Lutz
How To Be Good, Nick Hornby
Dogs and Dragons, Alex Kerr
The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Albom
The Cell, Inside the 9/11 Plot, John Miller et al
Ether Day, J.M. Fenster
Krakatoa, The Day The Earth Exploded, Simon Winchester
Captain Craig, E.A. Robinson
Comrades, Stephen Ambrose
Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of World War II, John W. Dower
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
Cornhuskers, Carl Sandburg
Eisenhower, Soldier and President, Stephen E. Ambrose
A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising, Miron Bialoszewski
The Pacific War 1931 - 1945, Saburo Ienaga
The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
Chicago Poems, Carl Sandburg
To Conquer The Air, James Tobin
Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones
Lucky, Alice Sebold
Old Man In A Baseball Cap, Fred Rochlin
The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman
Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
2 0 0 2
Ride The Iron Rooster, Paul Theroux
The War of 1812
These books, in no particular order, are lined up on the shelves beside my bed, also in no particular order, waiting to be read.
I don’t know how I’ll ever get around to all of them. There just isn’t enough time in the day.
The Picture Of Dorian Gray and other stories, Oscar Wilde
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
310 pages
Another Woolf novel I’ve collected to try to get a start on reading her.
Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, Nick Flynn, rec’d from Paperbackswap.com
Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, David McCullough
The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor
Gifts, Ursula K. Le Guin
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, Volumes 1 and 2, Theodore Roosevelt
Pavilion of Women, Pearl S. Buck
His Excellency, George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
The Prince, Machiavelli
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
a gift from Sean for Christmas 2005
Pogo Re-Runs, Some Reflections on Elections, Walt Kelly purchased
The Joy of Yiddish, Leo Rosten purchased
The Red Limit, the Search for the Edge of the Universe, Timothy Ferris
All Aboard with E.M. Frimbo, World’s Greatest Railroad Buff, Rogers E.M. Whitaker and Anthony Hiss
The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
My Year Before The Mast, Annette Brock Davis
American Dreams: Lost & Found, Studs Terkel
The Great Divide, Studs Terkel
Talking To Myself, Studs Terkel
Miracle At Midway, Gordon W. Prange
497 pages
I’ve read this once before, about five years ago, and ever since then I’ve been looking for a second-hand copy at a bargain-basement price. Found it at St. Vincent de Paul’s for a buck.
The Unknown Battle of Midway, The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons, Alvin Kernan
144 pages
I read a story about this book in the newspaper about three years ago and have been searching for a copy of it ever since. I swapped it for a book of mine on Paperbackswap.com
The Outlander, Gil Adamson
a gift from Mom on my 48th birthday.
Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts
278 pages
The Founding Fathers got all the credit; Roberts tries to round some up for the women who helped make the revolution
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
329 pages
I keep reading that Virginia Woolf is an author I must read, but I haven’t found the book that has compelled me to start in on her. Maybe this will be the one. One dollar at St. Vincent de Paul’s.
The Warburgs, the 20th-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family, Ron Chernow
722 pages
Never heard of them, but I like Ron Chernow and I found the book at St. Vincent de Paul’s for two bucks. Can’t pass up an opportunity like that.
Titan, the Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Ron Chernow
767 pages
I’ve heard about Rockefeller but know nothing about him except that he was once the richest man on earth, and that Rockefeller Center is named after him. Two bucks at St. Vincent de Paul’s.
First On The Moon, a Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin, with an epilogue by Arthur C. Clarke
419 pages
That’s right, Buzz Aldrin’s given name was ‘Edwin.’ One dollar at St. Vincent de Paul’s.
Carrying The Fire, Michael Collins
A memoir by the Apollo astronaut who circled the moon in the gumdrop-shaped Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin landed the Eagle on the moon’s surface. One dollar at St Vinnie’s
Metropolis, Thea von Harbou
The novelization of the greatest silent science-fiction movie ever made. Seven ninety-five used from an on-line vendor.
A Brief History Of Time; From The Big Bang To Black Holes, Stephen Hawking
Original Meanings; Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, Jack N. Rakove One dollar at St. Vinnie’s
The American Democracy, Harold J. Laski One dollar at St. Vinnie’s
Abigail Adams, a biography, Phyllis Lee Levin One dollar at St. Vinnie’s
Failure Is Not An Option, Gene Kranz Two bucks at St. Vinnie’s
Books I Heard of and Would Like To Read but Don’t Have On My Shelf Yet
Conversations with Ursula K. LeGuin, Carl Freedman, editor
about one of my favorite authors from the days when I began reading books in ernest, I may soon have to buy this one new from the store if I can’t find it discounted among the used books
Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, Stacy A Cordery Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter was a social butterfly who famously said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody, come sit by me.” When she married, her stepmother congratulated her by saying, “I want you to know you’ve never been anything but trouble to me.”
Come On Shore and We Will Kill And Eat You All, Christina Thompson
a short history of the Maori, as told by an American woman who married a Maori man. I have to admit I’m drawn to it mostly because of the title.
Evil In Modern Thought, Susan Neiman
Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, Susan Neiman
I have never read a word by this author; I heard an interview with Susan Neiman on National Public Radio and liked her ideas.
One Third Of A Nation: Lorena Hickock Reports On The Great Depression, Lorena Hickock
Hickock was a renowned reporter for the Associated Press. Unfortunately for her, she’s remembered now first as the lesbian lover of Eleanor Roosevelt, and then as a crackerjack reporter and writer. In the 30’s she was dispatched by the WPA to travel across America sending regular reports on what she’d seen. Her work, compiled in this volume, has become one of the great narratives of the Great Depression.
FDR, Jean Edward Smith
I can’t remember why I chose Smith’s biography over the dozens of others. Maybe it’ll come back to me, but more likely I’ll have to look into it again
Samuel Adams, A Life, Ira Stoll
Recently published, this biography of Adams received glowing reviews in The New York Times. I’m always looking for good biographies of the revolutionaries, so I added it to this list.
So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, Robert G. Kaiser
“Explores how lobbying has grown in influence and changed the way things work in the nation’s capital through the story of Gerald Cassidy. Cassidy & Associates was the first lobbying firm that tried to go public by selling shares on the stock exchange. At the time, Cassidy’s firm was the biggest in town, and Kaiser seized the opportunity to learn everything he could about Cassidy and the business of lobbying. The result is a remarkable look at how lobbying, a legal and legitimate activity, has helped create what Kaiser calls a ‘corroded culture’ in Washington.”