Mm. Now I kind of want crepes with nutella.

Maybe. I think it’s got a lot of potential for many things, including playing Kate sarcastic at the end, but the play as it’s written doesn’t necessarily suggest that she is. :/

My grandfather flew missions in North Africa, but he died when I was quite small, so I never heard his stories about it either. Though he was quite intimidating so I don’t know that I’d have asked about it if he had lived longer. Overpaid‘s quite good if you can find it, a quick engaging read.

Er. I am not really the person to ask about American history books. When I was small I was a big Anglophile, so the way it tended to work out was that the history stuff I read for fun was British history, and the history stuff I was forced to read was American. So these days I don’t really read American history recreationally. The standard thing people recommend is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, but I don’t know that I’d call it social history. Now if you’re looking for oral history, you can’t do better than Studs Terkel. He compiled loads of books of oral history, on topics like race, careers, theater, the Great Depression, all sorts of things, in 20th-century America.

I hope you like A. D. Nuttall! I’m so looking forward to reading his book on Shakespeare. It looks both accessible and interesting–more so, actually, than Dead from the Waist Down, of which I saw several reviews complaining that Nuttall was assuming reader familiarity with too many things. (Though I don’t think he was.)

Dude, if I were going to be in Nuttall’s next book, I would have made that its own post. :p But he is dead. It is sad for me to have just discovered him and then to find out he has already died, only a few years ago.

Also, at the start of the segment on Nuttall, my brain totally acquired temporary dyslexia and I read “I’m going to be in Nuttall’s next book.” I was uber excited for you.

Do you know, I would love to read some social history about America but I can never find any. There must be lots of wonderful books out there, surely?