What I'm Reading
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Thursday, March 17, 2011
This is a follow-up on last Thursday's post, plus a mention of new books.
Oh, yes. More books.
I finished "All Roads Lead to Calvary." Yeah, the ending was sorta predictable, but at least Jerome went through many machinations (including WWI) to get there. It was more of a novel of finding love than going out to change the world. To be fair, while the main character is female, the male lead ended up in the same place and neither of them changed their principles. So in that sense, it wasn't entirely predictable.
Next up was "Thunderstruck." Woah. Erik Larson had me at Crippen and Marconi, and the ride just got better from there. Larson follows the lives of both men to the point where Marconi's invention helped catch Crippen during his flight from England. I'm a broadcasting history geek, too, and as such really enjoyed that aspect of the book.
I'm slogging through "Murdering McKinley" right now. I suppose it wouldn't feel like such slow going if I hadn't read "Thunderstruck" first. The pacing isn't as tight, and it tends to bog down (at least for me) in several spots. Still, it's a fascinating read.
Chris and I went to one of the local Borders store closing sales today and I picked up a handful of other books. And why didn't I shop there before? Oh, I did, until one opened closer to me.
And yes, I indulged more in my current historical fetish. I did pick up Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City," and look forward to reading it. The next book is "The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century," by Harold Schechter. This is a true story surrounding the investigation and trial or Roland Molineux. Next is "Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt," by Edward P. Kohn. I was reading a bit about this in "Murdering MckKinley," and again, it seems like an interesting story.
Finally, a story that starts in the Gilded Age and carries on to the 1940s regarding the history of a rail line literally down the street from where I live. It's called "Images of Rail: Plano and the Interurban Railway." It was compiled by the Plano Conservancy for History Preservation, Inc. And what do you know? It opens with a picture of the Exposition of 1893 - the White City!
Looks like I have plenty of reading material to keep me busy!
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