I just had to give a post here that title, since Al and I have taken to saying it to each other all the time now. (It was Al who pointed out to me that an amazing number of sentences in the Harry Potter series start with, "Harry, Ron, and Hermione", but J.K. Rowling also acknowledges it in her recent TIME Magazine article.) We've been listening to the books on the iPod (with a Y-adapter to accommodate two sets...
March 27, 2005
Things I'm enjoying but don't have time to write individual posts about: John Adams, by David McCullough Honeymoon With My Brother hadn't come in yet at the library, and I was in the mood for more Revolutionary generation reading anyway after finishing Founding Brothers, so I picked this up at the branch library off Rittenhouse Square (called the Philadelphia City Institute branch, not Rittenhouse, strangely enough) last week. I was a bit worried by its size, and that it...
February 18, 2005
Herewith, some random observations that have been on my mind for a while and which I have not managed to blog about before now: Reading Material I don't know what I was thinking when I stopped at the library the other day; I'm still not done with Founding Brothers, I haven't finished the February issue of Martha Stewart Living (although like all good porn, MSL is pretty timeless), and I'm drowning in Wall Street Journals (I find those crazy...
October 26, 2004
A few random items: dj blurb opened up comments on his endorsement post, and I loved reading all most of the different points of view. (Most—but not all—commenters support Kerry, but whom each person supports not as interesting as why.) Al and I start childbirth classes tonight. This week's pregnancy newsletter from ParentsPlace.com seemed to suggest that I'd be nervous about the birth by now, but for some reason I'm not. I am loving The Price of Loyalty: George...
October 21, 2004
A while back I decided to revive my book reviews by moving the existing reviews to a mySQL database and adding new ones. The database was on the fritz for a few months, which put a damper on reviewing books as I read them, but now that it's back up and working again, I've decided to link my "Additional Reading" titles to the reviews rather than to Amazon.com. Here's how it will work: The heading, "Additional Reading", will always...
August 26, 2004
I have a bunch of things I wanted to write about (and probably will at some point over the next couple days), but the thing that's jumped to the top of the list with a bullet (or a boxcutter, as the case may be), is the 9/11 Commission Report. I finished a rather innocuous Jane Austen mystery the night before last, so I picked up the next book in my pile, which happened to be the 9/11 report. I...
March 21, 2004
This has been a week of books for me. I hadn't read much since my Austen binge back in the fall; after zipping through Party Monster, I was stymied by a rather boring biography of Ben Franklin. What snapped me out of the reading lull was our vacation in February, which prompted me to grab a bought-years-ago-but-never-read title off the shelf in our guest room: Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder. I then decided to tackle The...
September 16, 2003
I've been on a bit of a Jane Austen binge lately. I re-read my three favorites, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma, and now I've moved on to the never-before-read Northanger Abbey. I probably should have re-read Persuasion or picked up a new Jane Austen mystery instead; either would have been a bit less dull. Northanger Abbey is short, however, and probably easily finished. And today I've been watching the movie versions of Emma and Pride and...
May 19, 2003
I finished reading And the Band Played On on the plane back from Baltimore yesterday. Truly an amazing, powerful book—part medical mystery, part political thriller, part history of the evolution of the gay community—it was difficult to put down. I highly recommend the paperback version, since you'll want to carry this 672-page monster with you wherever you might find a few minutes to read. There were many revelations in the book (at least for me); it was interesting to...
April 23, 2003
I just noticed, after posting Seabiscuit in Motion, that the grandson of Red Pollard commented on my original Seabiscuit post yesterday. Wild. Oh, and then I Googled Norah Christianson (to make sure that I'd spelled her name correctly), and I came across this review of the American Experience episode on Seabiscuit. It mentions that the footage of the workouts was actually shot for the movie The Black Stallion (based on the book I'd loved as a pre-teen, and which...
I watched the American Experience episode on Seabiscuit last night (we Tivo'ed it, which accounts for the 1 day lag). For me, the book was a bit too long, but the TV program left me wanting more (perhaps another 30 minutes or so?). I'm glad they left out some of the (what I thought were) extraneous details, such as Charles Howard's beginnings in San Francisco and the shitpile and brothel in Tijuana, but I wanted more on how Seabiscuit...
April 18, 2003
I was noodling around Amazon.com this morning, looking for interesting books to add to my Wish List and presents to buy for family members, when I stumbled across a link that said, "Just Like You" in a place called Lori's Store. I was dying to see what someone Just Like Me would look like, so I followed the link. "Crushing disappointment" is about the best thing I can say about it; in fact, I might sue for libel. The...
April 15, 2003
Why have I been quiet for a few days? Mainly because I've been busy with other things, mulling over ideas that I'm not yet ready to write about, and because I'm not a fan of "I have nothing to say" posts. I've written them before, and invariably, they're the entries I enjoy least when I go back and review sections of my personal history. So I've opted to focus on work (which could use some focusing on) and reading...
April 7, 2003
Since finishing Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets a few weeks ago, I've had nothing to read at night or on the train. It hasn't been so bad, since I've mostly been driving to work lately and using the between-book interval to catch up on all the TV shows TiVo had recorded for me. After watching And the Band Played On on HBO and The Last of the Mohicans (for the first time, all the way through; I've...