Y’all. What is wrong with me? This isn’t a rhetorical question. What really is wrong with me? Lovely Kristen of We Be Reading, one of my favorite people in the blogosphere and fellow Diana Wynne Jones lover, gave me this book as part of her blogiversary giveaway last summer, and I am only just getting to it now. What? Why am I like this? I was fully aware that this was a delightful adventurey booklover’s novel, and yet I let it sit around my Louisiana room for months and months, and then I let it sit around my New York…
64 CommentsReading the End Posts
On Sunday, after a lovely day curled up under blankets in my pajamas eating and watching films, it occurred to me that it had been ages since I sat down and read a book cover to cover. There are few things I enjoy like I enjoy sitting down with a book and not getting up again until the book is finished. So after I caught up on teh blogz, I went into my living room and– Well, I went into my living room and watched the Packers game. With the Saints out of it, I’m supporting the Packers for the…
55 CommentsHow good for there to be a sweet little book about Christmas in New York City for me to read after my first Christmas season in New York City (the first of many!). I found this book for $1 at the Strand, which is all very fitting for a book that starts with its protagonist finding something unexpected at the Strand. I selflessly gave it to my mother and didn’t even read it before giving it to her because that’s the kind of angelic saintlike daughter I am. But then I swiped it from her two seconds after Christmas and…
43 CommentsBooks about perceptions of history and historical figures have abounded in my life lately, and I love them. Forever. Heather recently reviewed a book about how the impact of the Moses story on American culture, which I am planning to read soon; I got this book about how the treatment of various events in American history has changed in history textbooks over the years; and then there was Contested Will, which dealt with the history of the Shakespeare authorship controversy. In the few months when I thought I was going to write a senior thesis in college, it was going…
24 Comments2010 has been a year of change and good fortune. For the first time in my memory, I aced my New Year’s Resolutions instead of abandoning and forgetting about them two months into the year. 1. Eat more vegetables. Check. I started having spinach salad every day for lunch, and now it has become a habit. Sometimes I eat spinach as a snack, straight out of the bag. This is not disgusting. It’s healthy. I am like Popeye in a skirt (see 2). 2. Stop being so weird about my knees. Check. For years I wore almost no skirts, shorts,…
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Review: A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
Phew. Finally. I was reading this book for a good, ooh, three weeks I guess, before I finished it at last. Now I know a lot more things than I knew previously about the formation of the modern Middle East, but still not a lot. As with Three Empires on the Nile, much of the information contained in A Peace to End All Peace went in one eye and out the other. (That’s a gross image but “ear” doesn’t work with reading, so, er, sorry.) A Peace to End All Peace is about the fall of the Ottoman Empire and…
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