Killing Lincoln

Tonight, I finished Killing Lincoln, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.  This was a good pop-history account of Lincoln's assassination, but it was modeled way too much on a James Patterson mystery paperback for my taste. It has no references, very little background information, and the Notes section is an informal bibliography (most charitably). I had the hardest time with the insinuations that there was "more to the conspiracy than we know", presented without actually saying what the accusation was, or sourcing the accusation. The notes section mentioned a few "controversial" books, but it never said where the most out-there conspiracy theories came from.  It did helpfully note that the source for a lot of the conspiracy theory stuff has been thoroughly discredited by the historical community.

Basically, I thought this book did a good job of telling the story of the assassination, but it's not a useful piece of history writing, and if you'd paid attention in US history class, you'd have heard about 80% of it before. 

TL;DR: Good read, but feels like one of those History Channel shows you watch when you're home sick at 2 in the afternoon.

Moonwalking with Einstein

Last week, I finished Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer.  This book is about memory - how it works, how people train their memories, and what happens when our memories don't work quite right. Foer started it as a "creature feature" on people who compete in memory challenges. Assuming that they were some sort of freaks with photographic memories, he was surprised to discover that they were pretty much ordinary folks who had trained their memories for these specific tasks. As a challenge, Foer decided to dedicate a year of his life to training, and ended up winning the national competition (not a spoiler, as it is on the dust jacket).

Overall, this is a good look at one of the most interesting things we take almost entirely for granted.  The structure of training for the competition is a good frame for a bunch of different aspects of investigating memory.  He describes the memory palace technique that Pastor Oien used to memorize his sermons... As it turns out, that was one of the first recorded techniques for memorizing complex sequences of things, pioneered after a banquet hall collapse in Greece in the 5th century BC.

(As a heads up:  this is an interesting book, but it's not a how-to on improving your memory.)

Peter Pan and the Shadow Thief

A week or so ago I finished Peter Pan and the Shadow Thief the second book following "Peter Pan and the Starcatchers." These are fun kids books. They are quick reads and would make great read aloud books. I think the kids will really enjoy them when they are eight or 9. They are filled with adventure and truly cutthroat pirates.

In this book Peter Pan returns to London to warn his friend of a strange creature that is after the starstuff he helped recover in the first book. Not much I can say without giving away stuff from the first book.

Overall it was fun and I can't wait to read it again with the kiddos. I'm thinking after the Chronicles of Narnia and before Harry Potter.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

About a week and a half ago, I finished "The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo".  It was a really good, really disturbing mystery.  I had picked it up because the main character was supposed to be a hacker, and the author was allegedly really accurate with the hacking info.  Turns out that there was a lot of techno-sounding jargon with nothing actually very interesting.  Oh well.  Other than that disappointment, this was an exciting mystery novel with some crazy twists and turns.  The main characters are kind of unpleasant, and there are some disturbing topics involved, but it's well written and doesn't descend into the tastelessness that it easily could have.

Nothing Finished

Hi all - I am not reviewing any books today as I haven't finished anything in ages. The reason is, I have so many started and I can't seem to get through any one to say, "Completed!" I am in the middle of "The 19th Wife" that Meredith left for me. I am almost done with a John LeClarre that I don't like, have recently started a fun one called "Cat and Dog Theology" and am only in the very beginning of "The Omnivore's Dilema". Also I think I have the first 10 pages read in "The Hobbit". Maybe the problem is that for me, none of them are barn burners! (or I haven't gotten far enough in to say so - except the LeClarre) The month of March will be one of finishing, not starting anything new! How do you guys read so many books at once? Look what happened to me when I gave that a go...

I like Meredith's idea of finding a way to make a lending library. At least our blog will let us know who has what.

Lit

I just finished Lit by Tony Reinke. I think Alex did a great job with his explanation. So I'll just say I really enjoyed it and it was very thought provoking. It did a great job of making me really think about what I'm reading and why I'm reading it. Anyway, kids are asleep and I'm going to bed. Sorry to wimp out on this post.

Books as Gifts - My Recent Fail

Today I wanted to mention something that has nothing to do with a specific book.  I was reminded all to well last month that the Jordan family is into their books! It was Alex and Adam’s birthday in February and since we have been on a big book kick I sent them both a book for their birthday.  I must be spot on in knowing their taste because I got them both books that they already had!  How can that be?!  With that being said, if there is a book you have been wanting but don’t have yet we need to come up with a plan to make this known!  I feel terrible that the excitement of getting a new book was gone because they already had it.  Maybe next year I will be as good as guessing what they would like but pick something they don’t have yet!  I just hope that they are able to return them for a book they don't have yet and they can share it with us here!

Meredith