Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Summer Reading Lists

Three and half more days of kidlets at school.  There are moments I wonder if I'll  make it and not end up in prison for homicide.  In any case, I'd be lying if I wasn't thinking about my break and one of the things I really like to do during my summer break is get in some extra reading.  So here are some books I'm thinking about in no particular order.

 1921--Dave Demick gave me this book for my birthday last year about the 1921 baseball season.  It's Babe Ruth's coming out party and looks really good.

 A Well Paid Slave is the story of Curt Flood's fight against the reserve clause in baseball.  I confess to being a Flood fan, though I realize he wasn't a perfect human being.  Looking forward to this.

Love in the Year of Cholera is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.  I read A Hundred Years of Solitude last summer and loved it.  Believe it or not, even though it was on Oprah's List, this book is now out of print in English.  Bizarre.

The Quest for Glory is a biography of Union admiral John. A. Dahlgren.  Dahlgren was a terrific designer of the most reliable ordnance of the Civil War.  What he really wanted is what all sailors want-a command at sea.

 Paradise Lost by John Milton-Yes that Paradise Lost.  I've tried to read it a couple of times and never quite finished it, so I'm going to give it another go this summer. I've got it on my Kindle.

Meriwether Lewis by Thomas C. Danisi and John C. Jackson is the most recent  biography of the explorer.  It was a Christmas gift and I never tire of learning a bit more about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The Bloody Crown of Conan is anthology two of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories published by Ballantine.  Trash, crap, a pit of burned brain cells.  God I love it so.

These are on the confirmed list, though like my beloved dog Jack, my nose may lead me far afield.  I could see Jonathan Sumptions Hundred Years War histories leading me astray, perhaps a Philip 'Dick story or two, and I have an itching to read some the Admiral, Samuel Eliot Morrison's exploration books-his Columbus biography, which I don't own, but could get easily and cheaply enough, Matthew C. Perry, which I do own, or his European Discovery of America.  There's never enough time.

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