If folks are looking for some random, historic, longer-form reading/journalism, may I recommend The Stacks Reader?
… an online collection of classic journalism and writing about the arts that would otherwise be lost to history. Motivated less by nostalgia than by preservation, The Stacks Reader is a living archive of memorable storytelling—a museum for stories. We celebrate writers, highlight memorable publications, honor notable personalities, and produce interviews with writers and editors and illustrators in the hope of offering compelling insight into how journalism worked, particularly in the second half of the 20th Century.
I cancelled today’s flight back to the Twin Cities. Why should we live with such hurry, right?
So I’m reading Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz , and These Precious Days by Ann Patchett…apparently ‘we’ are interested in Patchett’s book too.
It’s a long time since I’ve bought a book. I’m still reading what I already have, and have read many times. Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Cicero etc… Long ago I used to read (and I think I still have them somewhere) works of Frederick Forsythe etc. One of my favourites is The Day of the Jackal. Internet interfered in my reading, and killed it almost entirely. lol.
Getting ready to read The Puma Years, and also, As Always, Julia. Was considering Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, but doubt if I’ll follow through. Attempted it 20 years ago, and loved the writing, but it was a bit slow, afraid it will be a slog presently, (for me, anyway) although I had a friend who re-read it yearly…
I loved that book! What a great storyteller, the part where he was growing up during WW2 and had to do a lot of foraging or go without food made me realize that I can never gripe about having to go to the grocery store again.
Instead of accumulating books to be donated to charity or fobbed off on friends, we have taken to making an annual donation to the public library branch we patronize. The amount at least equals our annual book purchases, and we request that money be applied to build the collection. Using the library’s request-and-hold system is really the same as buying books online, and when we return a book, it’s the same as donating it so that sharing is automatic and likely more widespread and effective than our old ways.
I have a Little Free Library next to my garage. I put books in there that I’m done with, and people take them. They also add ones of their own - really fun! I also put in magazines, DVDs, etc.
You can also donate books to Goodwill and your local public library’s Friends group for them to sell.
When we stopped buying books as a practice, we did donate and fob off stuff that we didn’t want to keep – to be sure, a lot (a lot) of bags and boxes. Now everything we read is on the library card. We’d be the last to say that property is a crime, but we’re also not shy to elbow to the head of the line to say owning stuff takes a lot of effort and too often can be troublesome beyond utility. Thus, donating our book budget to the library for augmenting its collection yields maximum bang for the book buck.
Latest non-fiction report. Shouldn’t be politically charged, which is a large objective in our non-fiction reports these days. But, we never know about the torpedoes . . . so, that said, this recent release:
Roosevelt Montas, Rescuing Socrates.
Made us feel young, before it reminded us of our accumulating years.
I watched the HBO series, StationEleven recently. Now, reading the novel since the was reported to be different. Really struck a cord with me…not sure why entirely.
This book is about food but it’s nonfiction & Excellent!
The Taste of War : World War Two and the battle for food / Lizzie Collingham. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-101-56131-7
Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In January 1944 the US army conducted a feeding experiment at Monte Cassino, using equipment borrowed from a battalion bakery. Ham, egg and cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, cakes and cookies were prepared and then delivered to the troops at the front by means of mules and jeeps. These fresh foods supplemented the C rations and were enthusiastically welcomed by the troops."
“Their response confirmed that soldiers needed to be fed freshly prepared food whenever possible and throughout the campaigns in Europe during the summer and winter of 1944 the quartermaster made a determined effort to reduce the use of ration packs wherever possible. Only 21 per cent of all the food provided in western Europe was given out in the form of operational ration packs, while 79 per cent of the soldiers’ meals were cooked in mess and field kitchens.152 This was a lesson which the quartermaster applied during the Americans’ next war, in Korea (1950–53), when as much of the troops’ food as possible was prepared in field kitchens.”
Collingham, Lizzie. Taste of War (p. 443). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Be advised that the chapters or sections dealing with the concentration camps & POWs are grim. But the whole book is not all unrelenting darkness.
