Sunday, February 26, 2012

Beach Books (updated)

One of the fun things about having my own blog is that I get to write about whatever I want to. What that means is that when I get bored with politics (as I am right now), I can write about whatever it is that's on my mind.

In a few weeks I'm going to be taking a trip to the beach where I'll get to spend entire days doing nothing much more than staring at what is represented in the picture up above. That's a little slice of heaven as far as I'm concerned.

In between being mesmerized by that, I'll likely fill my time with reading. So yesterday I did some book browsing and bought a few things to take along with me. Here's what I came up with:

The Healing by Jonathan Odell (yeah, I bought this one last week but I'm saving it to savor)

Great House by Nicole Krauss (if you've never read her first book - The History of Love - please do so NOW)

Restoration by Olaf Olafsson

The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future by Fawzia Koofi and Nadene Ghouri

I literally can't wait! Pretty impressive list, huh? Do you have any other suggestions? In case you can't tell, I'm mostly interested in historical novels and biographies of interesting (mostly unknown) people.

Update: Added today - Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron.

4 comments:

  1. Barbara Tuckman - A Distant Mirror

    A description of the Black Plague wrapped up in the life of Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy.

    Je suis ni roi, ni prince aussi: Je suis le seigneur de Coucy!

    Neither king nor prince am I: I am the Lord of Coucy!

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  2. Recently read The "Wordy Shipmates" by Sarah Vowell. It's about the original beef between the Pilgrims and resonates with the religious freedom issues today. She's a funny writer though and attracted to quirky facts so it's a fun read about a serious subject. I'd recommend all her books for that reason anyway, while they aren't fiction, historical facts are improbable enough to read that way. Her latest is about the overthrow of Hawaii by the US "Unfamiliar Fishes" if you'd like something more ocean related.

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  3. Replies
    1. Thanks for stopping by Jonathan!

      I've been dying to get started reading it all week. But I'm exercising some will power to wait because I know that I'll enjoy it so much more if I can just get lost in it to my heart's content on vacation rather than have to fit in reading in between the interruptions of real life - like work.

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