I'm planned to read Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City anyhow, but it got moved up in the stack due to it being the book club pick for December. Being at home sick all of Thanksgiving weekend meant lots of sleep, but also a fair bit of reading. I finished it on Friday. Gory and interesting at the same time. It made me realize how long it's been since I've been in Chicago, and how little of the city I really got to know living in the suburbs for 6 years.

E.D. Hirsh, jr's Cultural Literacy is one of those books I'd had floating around for song long that I don't remember when or where I bought it. I think a library book sale though. I'd run across, in something else I read recently, the idea that children should learn to read by using books that have content rather than books that are created just for the express purpose to associating marks on a page with spoken words. I have a feeling that would work well for some people, but might make some people end up even less literate then they are now. I've never studied education or child psychology though, so what do I know.
posted by kristin at 9:01 PM

Nancy Kress's An Alien Light wasn't as good as her Beggars series books, but it wasn't a bad book to carry around and read random places. First contact SF, basically.

Robert Heinlein's Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel was one of his juveniles. Boy gets spacesuit, gets kidnapped, rescues the girl, etc. Not bad, but it would have been better read around age 12.

Michael Rabagliati's Paul Moves Out is a graphic novel centering around the time when he finally left his parents house and moved in with his girlfriend.

Robert D. Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts tells of his travels around the region before everything blew up in the 90s. Definitely recommended.

William Least Heat Moon's Columbus in the Americas is a slight book describing Columbus's travels. I was expecting something more like his travel memoirs, but this was straight history. Not bad, but not really compelling either.

Simon Winchester's The River at the Center of the World is the story of his trip up the Yangtze from the Pacific to somewhere near its source (that source isn't entirely decided upon, so he got near it at least). I read this one on airplanes and airports. It should tell you something that it managed to keep me awake on the airplane in my sleep-deprived state until I finished it.

Lisa Goldstein's The Alchemist's Door is a novelization of the creation of the Golem in medieval Prague. Not as good as The Red Magician but a good read.
posted by kristin at 2:38 PM

Last night I went to Elliott Bay Book Co. to see Daniel Quinn do a reading from his latest book, Tales of Adam. I've only read two of his Ishmael and My Ishmael. (And need to re-read Ishmael). The part of the evening that was exceptional was the Q&A session. Usually when I go see authors read, most of the people asking questions ask things like "How do you right?" or "Where do you get your ideas?", in essence asking "How do I become a writer too?". For DQ the questions were more like "What's the meaning of life?", "Is there an afterlife?", and "Do you think we can fix the planet?".
posted by kristin at 10:55 AM

I had a Powells gift card leftover from selling them stuff before I moved and decided to use it the other day. My order showed up yesterday:

Bruce Sterling - The Zenith Angle
James P. Blaylock - Land of Dreams
Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds (to replace a copy I gave away)
William Barton - When We Were Real
David Brin - The Practice Effect
Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration
Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World
Madison Smartt Bell - Waiting for the End of the World
Donald Barthelme - 60 Stories
David Jay Brown - Brainchild
Morris Berman - The Twilight of American Culture
Frank Chin - Donald Duk
Catherine Caufield - The Emperor of the United States of America and other Magnificent British Eccentrics
posted by kristin at 1:22 PM

Sunday night I stayed up to finish Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. It was the first time in a long time that I've had to finish a novel by a certain date. (Which somehow seems different than needing to do reading for class by a certain day). Monday night I went to my first meeting of a bookgroup that Molly invited me to. (Yay for meeting people through the blog.) The book group folks seemed nice, and the next book (Erik Larson's Devil in the White City) is one I've had recommended many times, so I'm happy about all that. Let's just hope I don't jinx this one the way I did several book groups in Portland.

As for the book, it wasn't entirely what I expected (especially the ending, but I won't speak much of that in case anyone reading this wants to read the book). Let's just say that the book overall is a post-apocalyptic novel that oddly focuses more on what lead up to the disaster rather than how people are surviving after. I enjoyed it overall. The only other Atwood I'd read was The Handmaid's Tale.
posted by kristin at 12:55 PM

Last night I finished Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season. I'm glad I don't live in Florida. (I'm especially glad I don't live in a Hiaasen novel).
posted by kristin at 10:37 AM

Last Thursday night I had one of those nights where I accidently stayed up way too late reading. 6:53am to be exactly. Fortunatley my morning class was canceled for the day.

Early in the evening I finished up Peter Morville's Ambient Findability. It had been recommended by several people at school so I picked it up. It's all about findability, as you may have guessed from the title.

The book that kept me up way too late was Robert Shea's All Things are Lights. Apparently you can read the entire book online if you want. I'd picked the paperback up years and years ago and had never gotten around to reading it (much like his other books which I've been inhaling this year). This one stars a troubadour/knight in 13th century France. You've got romance, an Inquisition, Cathars, a Crusade, and much more.
posted by kristin at 10:44 PM