Category: Books & Learning

When I was 10 or 12 years old, my mother read the short story ‘Buffalo Gals’ out loud to my sister and me. It seeped into my subconscious. I remembered little of the plot as my life stretched on, but recalled nuance, shapeshifting, dreamlike visions and a near worship of the Oregon high desert landscape I would, as a teenager, come to see as my spiritual mirror.

I have a bit of a star-struck love for TC Boyle, but this novel made my head buzz with the pestering question: ‘Why?’
The tale, told in reverse-chronological order, unwinds the dramatic coil of Wright’s libido, which apparently ran rampant and unchecked through the first half of the 20th century.

A mystery based on real events set during the senescence of Victorian ideals, starring the real human Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Arthur & George” combines literary suspense with the themes of slowly declining empire. It explores what it means to be English at a time when what it means to be English is changing faster than it has ever done so before; it glances at the accelerating evolution of change in the time of full-steam-ahead Edwardian idealism.

Taut and engrossing, Steven Johnson’s ‘The Ghost Map’ is a rollicking multidisciplinary romp through Victorian London’s scientific, cultural and medical evolution. Johnson’s focal point is a devastating–indeed, decimating–1854 cholera outbreak in Soho, which becomes a crucible of the nascent field of epidemiology and highlights the stark changes in science throughout the mid-19th century.

In 2009, I made a goal to get through Herodotus’ Histories, several Shakespeare works, and some French literature. Not to mention a focus on reading more non-fiction, especially science. See how successful I was, see my plans for 2010, and share your own reading projects and plans for the new year.

All the ingredients of a wickedly delicious, ground-breaking history. The premise is delicious: The story of how Henry Hudson’s New York Harbor-discovering adventure was really a maniacal farce involving the essential hijacking of an East India Company ship and its incompatible (half English, half Dutch, fully unable to communicate with each other) crew.

Iain Pears’ novel about the ebb of civilizations, virtue and evil spans almost two millennia but very little geographical space: it tells three stories set at the brink of societal chaos in the south of France. Beautifully structured, academically sound, ‘The Dream of Scipio’ is worth a read. But it might not change your life.

To better understand Nabokov I decided it might make sense to read him from the beginning. I already owned a copy of Mary–his first novel, written in Russian–and pulled the copy off of its bookcase last night with aims to scan the first few pages (to see what I was in for). Quick answer: “Utterly magnificent without qualification.”

Pickpocketing. Urban filth: cold, grey grimy. Poverty, crime and mortality. Dickens. Rain and horses and fashion. Yep, Victorian London. Sara Stockbridge’s novel recounts all of its requisite stereotypes–emphasizing the east-end, grimmer ones–without adding much to consider. “Grace Hammer” is a sometimes mystery, sometimes crime story, sometimes quasi-historical vignette that, while it has a collection of endearing impressions, doesn’t seem to have much to say.

Of late, I have been intrigued by books about exploration, geography, and the Age of Discovery. 1521: It’s the height of the Spanish Inquisition. The New World has been discovered, but is mostly a cartographic blank spot (embellished with dragons and mermaids). European men and women are dirty and poor, for the most part, and [...]