Is it Monday Already?
I had a great weekend. Wonderful time spent with my hubby and kids doing not much of anything. I had so much fun in fact that I continued in the weekend mindset yesterday. The kids and I did our schoolwork and I did housework, but over all the relaxed and easy feel of the weekend carried me through my Monday. Today, it feels like the start of a week. I woke up with more stuff to do than I want to, and two quarreling kids. So instead of jumping into my day, I'm sitting here writing on Xanga.
In fact, to prolong my entry into the harsh light of day, I think I'll catch-up on all the books I've been reading that I haven't yet mentioned in blogs.
Maybe it was a mistake to publish my summer reading list. Maybe it was just a challenge that I wasn't meant to meet. I've read almost everything I'm supposed to have read at this point, plus a dozen other books, but I certainly haven't read them in the order I originally planned. It all comes of packing a bag of books and then reading whatever was on top first.
Widow for a Year - John Irving had a lot of fun writing this book. The most wonderful part of it for me was the iddle section where the protagonist, an author, works out the way she is going to plot a book. The way that Irving exposes his own work through the eyes of his character Rose has the same delicious feel as an inside joke.
Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford - Written by one of the leaders of the Plymouth Plantation this is not so much a book as it is an edited version of a personal diary. Bradford is brutally honest in exposing the reality of life for the early Pilgrims. He offers a perspective on the relationship between these Eurpoean invaders and the native population that is seldom discussed in contemporary history books as he describes the difficulty of remaining neutral in tribal conflicts. The horror of starvation as ship after ship brings new bodies but no new supplies is one that he states matter-of-factly. The men, women and children who were already there reduced their rations of food by halves and quarters to feed the newcomers.
As a case study of communist practice, Marx would have done well to study this work. The London-based company that sponsored the pilgrims insisted on a communal plan in which everyone worked so many hours in the community fields and they all shared out of the proceeds. It was only when Bradford defied this order and divided up the land for each family to work and receive the benefit of their labor that the plantation began to move from starvation to prosperity.
Dragonriders of Pern - by Anne McCaffrey. I want a dragon. If I can't have a dragon, I want a fire lizard. I don't care what color it is. I reread the Dragonriders series every few years and I always enjoy my visit to Pern where the dragons and their riders rise and fight the "thread". I think I was first enchanted by the idea of a telepathic link with a sentient dragon, impressed at hatching to become a lifelong companion offering unconditional love and shared existence. In answer to the cry of every existentialist that in the end that we are all horribly alone, Dragonriders offers a rich fantasy of fellowship that seems just almost possible even in the absence of an impressionable lizard.
Where Does the Weirdness Go, and The End of Physics - David Lindley. Well written, easy to follow for a non-technically minded reader who has an interest in the current issues of physics. Weirdness is a succinct discussion of quantum physics. End describes the difficulty of reaching a General Unified Theory (that's Theory of Everything to us readers of popular science.) Lindley makes the case that the GUT will never be possible because there are some physical events for which there is no cause-effect relationship - just a statistical understanding of the likelihood of occurence.
Mystery Week - Smoke and Mirrors, by Barbara Michaels - this author has ben on my radar screen for years but i'd never picked up any of her works before. Smoke and Mirrors follows a young woman who becomes involved in the Senatorial Campaign of her mother's oldest friend. Murder and intrigue linked to long forgotten sins of the fathers threaten to end the race before it starts. In Barbara Michael's other life, she is author Elizabeth Peters. She holds a doctorate in Egyptology and writes of the adventures of Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson as they explore the riches of Egypt in the early decades of the 20th century. In Lord of the Silent and He Shall Thunder in the Sky, I found the references to previous adventures confusing and would not recommend that you start in the middle of the series as I did. However, the tongue in cheek and understated style of the protagonists appealed to my sense of humor and I enjoyed the characterizations. Chosen Prey, by John Sandford - I like Sandford, and nto in the least because his books are set in an area of the country with which I am familiar. His Minnesotisms are great - much better than "Fargo" for capturing the flavor of the Minnesota-mindset. His villians are chilling, his detective is human, and the solutions to the mysterys are not cookie cutter endings. In Chosen Prey a serial killer close to the end of a twenty year career in murder tips his hand and attracts the notice of Lucas Davenport. Davenport begins the dance of detection in between scenes in which he has to go home and do his duty as his significant other really wants to have a baby. Ovulation waits for no crime figure and I appreciated the intrusion of everyday concerns into the game of cops and robbers that Davenport prefers to his "real" life.
Signs of Intelligence, by William Dembski - This is a collection of essays by a number of scientists and philosophers on the scientific evidence for Intelligence in the natural world. Edited by William Dembski who has himself made a significant contribution to the field, it summarizes most of the current debate. Readers who are under the impression that the Intelligent Design movement is just a cover for sneaking Creationism in the back door of the discussion on the Origins of Life will be surprised by the depth and content of the argument these researchers present.
Romance Week - A Kiss to Remember - by Theresa Medieros - I have read every book that this author has ever published. A Kiss to Remember isn't quite on the same par as her "Fairest of Them All" - but if you are looking for something to read on a beach, you can't go wrong with A Kiss. The heroine is refreshingly transparent in her relationship with the amnesiac hero but doesn't cross the insipid lack of self-awareness that so many authors impart to their romantic leads. (TBA titles are still waiting TBA since I haven't picked out anything else in the romance category to read.)
Not on the list, but also read this summer have been Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Sandman series (see link in previous blog to review of those works.) Many thanks fo wormy for the loan of the Sandman books. Many thanks to Dwaber for sending me a box of books that included the Bone People, which I have not yet read, and others which I have finished and enjoyed very much. (Smilla's Sense of Snow, Three Christs of Ypsilanti, The Name of the Rose, Geek Love, Microserfs and Letters to a Young Poet.) I have also not been able to avoid my attraction to theology and have completed Clark Pinnock's Wideness of God's Mercy. I just got a book in the mail yesterday (oh, yummy sensation), so I'll be reading The Story of Scripture by Daniel Jeremy Silver before I dive into Steven Pinker's Language Instinct.
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