So I starting listening to this last fall, pre the arrival of Little Beth Ellen. Then I didn’t go anywhere for months, so it took coming off of maternity leave and commuting to work again to finish it up. The reason I was excited for this one was twofold: I’m Hamilton obsessed, just like the rest of the world, but also I, like many others, grew up in a town named for the man (also the only one in the country spelled correctly, a fun […]
My Kind of Vacation
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
This review is for the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell. I love history. It was my favorite subject in school. I’ve always seen it as a series of stories, twisted together and linked past to present, leading us to where we are now, not just a list of wars, dates, and names. Those names were people, they lived and loved, they worked, fought, and died. Some we know about, most we don’t, but I love reading and learning about the stories […]
“Oui oui, mon ami, je m’appelle Lafayette! The Lancelot of the revolutionary set!”
Guyyyyys this book. It took me almost three months to read it, when I expected to finish it in a couple of days! I just didn’t like it very much, and I’m not sure why. It might be that it was the first Sarah Vowell book I’ve listened to on audiobook, but I don’t think so. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and I love Sarah Vowell’s voice (not to mention the voices of her many stellar audiobook guests, including John Slattery as Lafayette, […]
Pretty great except for the musical interludes
When I bought this book of essays by Sarah Vowell, it didn’t occur to me that the 2002 publishing date would be so noticeable while reading it. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed reading The Partly Cloudy Patriot, but it was thoroughly weird being thrust back into the days of the Bush v. Gore clusterfuck and the years leading up to 9-11. I was a non-voting teenager back then, so while I remember the highlights, I wasn’t exactly keeping up with politics. There is […]
Not even Sarah Vowell could spice up the Puritans for me
I was not quite as enamored with this one as I was with Assassination Vacation. I don’t blame Vowell — she does her best here, and quite a few lines made me laugh out loud — it was just not a gripping subject for me. “I’m always disappointed when I see the word ‘Puritan’ tossed around as shorthand for a bunch of generic, boring, stupid, judgmental killjoys. Because to me, they are very specific, fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys who rarely agreed on anything except that […]
Another politically charged road trip
I know Sarah Vowell from her numerous appearances on the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; after various reviews of Vowell’s work, many in the last month, I figured I’d give her a shot. “History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.” It took me a while to get interested in this one. I think my primary problem was leading with Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. In history class you hear about Lincoln and Kennedy’s assassinations ad naseum; while […]