I hate quitting on books. Hate. It. Because I’m a fast reader, I can usually convince myself to stick with my read. But I white-knuckled my way through about 100 pages of “The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters” before I finally tossed it and moved on. Life’s too short. I’d never heard of the Mitford Sisters before but I guess they’re pretty famous. They were socialites who managed to deliver more drama than the Kardashians. Beautiful, witty, articulate and unpredictable, they were at […]
There’s certainly a lot of damned things that happen
If there’s one thing that can be said about this book, it’s that it lives up to its title. The premise is fascinating: An institute of historical research called St Mary’s, associated with the (also fictional) University of Thirsk in northern England, is not the stuffy old institution it appears to be but actually conducts its historical research in the most contemporary way possible–they go back in time and observe the events firsthand. The main character, Dr Madeleine Maxwell, called Max, is recruited by St […]
Trudge: The Unmooring of Exposition
Greetings CBR! I’m excited to begin my first ever half cannonball with a nod to my New Year’s resolution: to read more nonfiction in 2017. Unfortunately, I started with this disappointing book by one of my longtime favorite personalities, Rachel Maddow. In Drift, Maddow describes the USA’s descent into a near constant state of war. She laments how sharply we’ve deviated from the Jeffersonian ideal to “never keep an unnecessary soldier”, and how in our modern national security state, American civilian life continues largely unaffected […]
The perfect book for dorks like me
I’m the weirdo who always thinks about the details of historical living. How exactly did they come up with indoor plumbing and how in the world did they create such a complex system to accommodate everyone’s plumbing needs? How was the infrastructure built to so many houses? Same with electricity. How in the world did they get everything set up so cities were connected to power? These are the dorky things I think about when I read historical books. So when I heard that there […]
An unique mystery
3.5 stars. This book fell just a little flat for me but I think that had more to do with my expectations than the actual book itself. It’s nice to finally pick up a genre book that isn’t all white people. This series centers on detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty who work on culturally sensitive crimes up in Canada. When they’re called in to investigate the death of a wealthy businessman, Rachel can’t figure out what this has to do with their department and […]
It’s a statement that acknowledges that grief and hope can coexist.
Rebecca Solnit’s publisher was giving away free copies of “Hope in the Dark” in the days after the election, and I jumped all over it as fast as I could. I loved Solnit’s “Men Explain Things to Me” which, among other things, made it clear that she is an expert on many things besides misogyny and feminism. And boy, is she. “Hope in the Dark,” which is an examination of the history of civil disobendience and social change, was the salve, and the inspiration/kick-in-the-butt, and […]
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