True evidence of spring is not just in the flowers, the budding leaves on the trees, the lovely smell of wet dirt after a long winter, but in the appearance of the first spring produce.
The first leaves of mache are up as well as sorrel and ramps. We picked up our first local ramps of the season at the market on Friday. We also enjoyed our first soft-shell crabs although there are no pictures of those.
Otherwise I am reveling in being able to do things and catch up with things that have been left languishing. I am also truly enjoying having the time and attention to read.
I finished Fallen Founder for the second time and truly enjoyed it this time around. I think I enjoyed it the first time but I also think that I was too frazzled and concerned with other things and did not really pay attention. I know there were several other books at that time that I picked up and just never finished, not because I wasn't interested in them, but because I had little focus.
I recognize that I do not have the mind-set of a scholar, and I am really not interested in reviewing books either, there are so many others who do that better than I. But I really enjoyed reading this book, it was gripping at times, and interesting to read and I think it was a fairly fair portrait of Aaron Burr. It was quite fascinating to read about Burr and his interactions with the other founding fathers of our country and to see think about them not just as these great men, but as people with their own foibles and follies just like us. Politics was no different then than now, or as Nancy Isenberg says on page 311, "Partisan politics were deeply personal — and often irrational". I suppose longing for more reasonable intercourse between politicians is merely a pipe-dream.
I am currently reading two books that capitalize on current political and economic realities and they are both fun, interesting reads. I downloaded The House of Dimon to my Kindle right after reading a review of it and I am truly enjoying it. Patricia Crisafulli's writing is a bit breathless, but I suppose that is fitting for the financial turmoil and times with which she concerns herself in this book. I am also finding that the Kindle a rather compelling way to read. I like that I can have several books and it marks my place; it is the perfect size to carry around, you can put it down without worrying about loosing your place, and I can set the type size to be perfect for just about any situation. The fact that I got a book I wanted to read instantly didn't hurt either.
I am also reading The Breakthrough by Gwen Ifill and it is interesting and I am learning things I didn't know and looking at contemporary politics a little bit differently, from a bit of a different vantage point. Whereas Patricia Crisafulli's book is interesting just because it is about a person who is in the thick of things now, Gwen Ifill's book is more general and leads me to longer periods of reflection. Gwen Ifill writes like the journalist she is, and her words on the page sound just like she was uttering them on The News Hour or Washington Week. As I read I can imagine her sitting there and talking to me. I wonder if she reads the audiobook version of this book. That would be very interesting.
Comments
One response to “Book update”
I don’t know any of these books which seem to focus on American politics, but I appreciate hearing about them, even in just a brief reference — it’s always good to hear what others are reading, what’s out there on the horizon. As you know, I’ve been taking this approach myself with books I’ve read, sometimes simply recording the fact that I’ve read them. If I had to write a review of everything I read, I’d stop writing the blog! Very interested in your comments on Kindle — can’t imagine myself going there, but who knows? How do you find it for those situations when you want to find a particular page based on a fleeting impression or memory? You know, those times when you think something was mentioned or discussed and you’re pretty sure it was on the bottom of a right-hand page somewhere in the first third of the book . . . ?