In a bit of a book desert at the moment. A combination of things. Travel, workload, future travel, and future workload, distraction, laziness, and perhaps a bit of bad luck, but this doesn’t mean I haven’t found some gems like the two books you see here. I have additional books ready for the read, but they are behemoth monsters-one about Putin and his cronies, and another about a famous historian, both over one thousand pages.
This takes a specific kind of weather forecast for me to pursue, and right now I’m looking for sunny and mild.
Megan Mayhew Bergman’s “Birds of a Lesser Paradise” was a complete surprise. I didn’t know anything about this book when I started reading. Beautifully written. Stories about you and me and life and pain and success and all things good and evil. And birds. My wife is reading it now. “So beautiful,” she said to me last night while waving the book in front of me.
If you don’t know Simon Winchester, then today is your lucky day. I’ve read several of his titles and have never been disappointed. Turns out, I knew next to nothing about Krakatoa, or about Dutch rule at the time. Nor did I know much of anything about anything. I like authors who remind me what a dumbass I am. Old Krakatoa was a big deal. One of the most interesting aspects of this story was that this was one of the first world events delivered to the public in real-time by undersea communication cables. Typical Winchester, you don’t get the bang until 200 pages in. “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883.” is pure awesome. (Unless you were near the volcano.)
