Quick Stop

Suzette has also ordered the latest Robert Caro biography in the Lyndon Johnson series:

My note to her:

"I wonder if George R.R. Martin is Robert Caro in disguise. After all, they both write about politics, power and characters who display both noble and ignoble characteristics. And they both take for freaking evah to write the next volume of a series.  Hmmmm...."

For those in the know, which one of them said this?

"Nobody believes this, but I write very fast."

Okay, after you've picked yourself up off of the floor and stopped laughing, go here to see.  But really, it could have been either one of them.

Book Your Ticket

I really enjoyed keeping a list of my reading last year, so here's the kick-off to my 2011 monthly reading list.

January - 4

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand[1]

Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume I, Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Other Editors of the Mark Twain Project[2]

Rab and His Friends, John Brown[3]

Don’t Tell Me Words Don’t Matter: How Rhetoric Won the 2008 Presidential Election, Joel B. Pollack[4]*

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[1] By the author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend, this story of Olympic miler Louie Zamperini who survived Japanese prison camp in World War II. An outstanding read.

[2] Authoritative is the word, too. The book is a very strange hybrid of very serious people passing on very serious background material, thought and facts about a very irreverent author who refuses to cooperate with their seriousness. I read all the notes, skipping nothing but the bibliography. Given that this book is 760 pages long, my reading list is short this month!

[3] This short story by Twain’s dear friend John Brown was mentioned in his autobiography a couple of times, so I put the autobiography aside, ordered this on Kindle, read the short story, and then bounced right back to the autobiography. It helped me to flesh out Twain’s friend.

[4] Pollak ran against my current representative, Jan Shakowsky, in the last election. Thus my interest, in this book. He’s a very persuasive writer with some very good points, no matter whether you voted for Obama or McCain.

*Read in paperback.

Book Your Ticket

So I fibbed. Big changes coming in January. In the meantime, here's my October reading list containing 11 books and bringing my total for the year to 138:

Easily Amused, Karen McQuestion*

Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese[1]*

Ape House, Sara Gruen[2]*

The Last Block in Harlem, Christopher Herz*

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, Ben Macintyre[3]*

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption, Jim Gorant[4]*

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, Lauren Willig*

Whiskey Sour: A Jack Daniels Mystery, J.A. Konrath[5]*

The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, Lauren Willig*

Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Live with a Blind Wonder Cat[6]*

Cross Roads, Fern Michaels*

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[1] Set mainly in Addis Ababa, the story of conjoined twins born to a Malaysian nun and an English doctor at a mission hospital and adopted by a pair of Indian doctors. History, culture and medicine are all bound together in the telling of this novel. A most excellent read!

[2] By the author of Water for Elephants, this novel combines working with primates (bonobos) in a language lab setting, animal rights activists and reality television in an intriguing morality tale.

[3] The true story of The Man Who Never Was, which is actually more fantastic than the Hollywood version. If you’re a fan of WWII intelligence stories, this is for you.

[4] If you are a dog lover this is a must. You will never, ever look at Michael Vick as a good human being again.

[5] Far superior to what the cutesy title and the conceit would indicate. I’ll be reading more of these.

[6] Very, very funny… and no person or animal dies.