Reading List

While in B'lo for the holidays, I finished reading Stardust Lost (and in the process, learned a ton about Yiddish theatre), and started Water for Elephants, which I finished this afternoon. I recommend both, and will engage anyone who's interested in a literary conversation. They couldn't have been two more different books, save for their focus on the entertainment industry. How interesting to have read them back-to-back.

Jake and I are also huge fans of audiobooks while driving, since our mutual music fandoms only meet up at small and specific points (Springsteen, Dropkick Murphys, They Might be Giants, Smashing Pumpkins...). So, on the way up, and in the car running to and from various locations in western New York, we treated ourselves to David Sedaris reading his new book When You are Engulfed in Flames. Lots of funny stuff, and several thought-provoking essays. High points for me were his lengthy narrative about going to Japan to quit smoking, the loud woman who sat next to him on a flight when he refused to move seats, and his account of trying to hunt down a human skeleton to present to his partner Hugh for his birthday.

On the way home yesterday, we learned about the Puritans via Sarah Vowell's reading of her book The Wordy Shipmates. I enjoyed it very much: more than The Partly Cloudy Patriot, but not as much as Assassination Vacation, which is absolutely one of my favorite books about American history. The Wordy Shipmates seemed to get waylaid at points, particularly during a discussion about the Pequot massacre. I've been particularly interested in the Pequots over the last couple of months, but I still couldn't keep events and people straight while listening. Maybe it would have been easier if I were reading, and could have referred back to earlier pages. In all, the account of early American settlement by the "hot Protestants" (my new favorite name for these Puritan non-separatist settlers) was engrossing, and I learned a great deal about who they were, why they left England, and their goals for the new colony, realized or not.

(Vowell is absolutely right when she points out that even college-educated Americans can't pull out any quotes from 17th-century Americans. Jake could, but only just. The rest of our friends had no idea. I knew that Miles Standish was called "Captain Shrimp." And I think that should count!)