Books that I read on vacation
Aug. 1st, 2005 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angela_oWhile at the beach I managed to read quite a few books *whispers* and quite a lot of fanfic. My totally unsolicited book reviews.
Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty. I've read them before, but they deserved another go. I love the narrator/pov character in this series. These are generally billed as YA, but I could only have hoped to be this savvy when I was a teenager. I was very excited to learn that a third installment is being published next spring.
The Mulberry Tree by Jude Deveraux. Picked it up at the Friends sale for a buck. Summertime reading for sure. Okay, but ultimately forgettable.
Ava's Man by Rick Bragg. A biography of sorts of the author's maternal grandfather, a working class Southerner in the first half of the 20th century. An excellent book. I remember men like this from my own childhood in the South. I also loved Bragg's previous All Over But the Shoutin' which was about the author's mother.
Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult. A story centered around a supposed infanticide in modern Amish country and the resultant culture clash. Picoult always writes atmospheric, thought provoking books and this was no exception.
I also started and got about halfway through The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History by John M. Barry. Gripping nonfiction. I knew that there had been an influenza pandemic in 1918-1919, but I had absolutely no idea of the scope. Very gripping reading and the science is fascinating as well.
With the exception of the Jude Deveraux I'd recommend them all.
Anyone have any recommendations for me?
Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty. I've read them before, but they deserved another go. I love the narrator/pov character in this series. These are generally billed as YA, but I could only have hoped to be this savvy when I was a teenager. I was very excited to learn that a third installment is being published next spring.
The Mulberry Tree by Jude Deveraux. Picked it up at the Friends sale for a buck. Summertime reading for sure. Okay, but ultimately forgettable.
Ava's Man by Rick Bragg. A biography of sorts of the author's maternal grandfather, a working class Southerner in the first half of the 20th century. An excellent book. I remember men like this from my own childhood in the South. I also loved Bragg's previous All Over But the Shoutin' which was about the author's mother.
Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult. A story centered around a supposed infanticide in modern Amish country and the resultant culture clash. Picoult always writes atmospheric, thought provoking books and this was no exception.
I also started and got about halfway through The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History by John M. Barry. Gripping nonfiction. I knew that there had been an influenza pandemic in 1918-1919, but I had absolutely no idea of the scope. Very gripping reading and the science is fascinating as well.
With the exception of the Jude Deveraux I'd recommend them all.
Anyone have any recommendations for me?
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Date: 2005-08-02 03:15 pm (UTC)When I was in college, I took a historiography class in which the professor lamented this trend toward micro-histories. I was utterly baffled. I almost never read the massive mult-volumed sets that used to be popular. It took me three years to get through the first five volumes of Dostoevskii's massive bio set, and I love Dostoevskii. It was just too freaking long. I mean, obviously we don't want to lose our ability to look at history in a larger framework, but it's the details that humanize the past and make us remember it. I retained far more of the historical detail I picked up in trashy romance novels than the stuff I was forced to memorize in History of Modern Asia.
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Date: 2005-08-02 07:44 pm (UTC)It's too funny that you say that you retain more from historical novels. I ended up a history major (and military history at that) because of the trashy romance novels that I used to read at my grandmother's. They're always set against the backdrop of some major historical event and it was hysterical to realize how much detail information I knew because of them. I remember looking around one of my junior history seminars (which had about 15 students and all but two were male) and thinking, "I'll bet I'm the only person here who ended up in the major by way of romance novels." :)