"Barmy and scary and predating Jekyll and Hyde. And written by a shepherd who barely read any books. A Scottish classic, a world classic, yet hardly anyone, writers excepted, has actually read it"Of course I ordered it. Look for it on my April reads list.
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]*[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.
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
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]*
[1] Set mainly in
[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
[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.
