Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
History can often seem intimidating because it seems like only the stories of dead white men. And there’s a reason for that. The white men were the ones who kept most of the records, being the ones who were educated and literate, and so they are the ones about whom we know. I am…
Caitlin Moran talks in her book, How to be a Woman, about the idea that often when we discover a particular book, we are suddenly introduced to all its friends, and so join this society that we hadn’t even known existed before. So if you, for example, start reading Dorothy Parker, suddenly before you know…
I’ve been working on a podcast about Mary Queen of Scots, which I’ll be recording this week, and as part of that I’ve been reading John Guy’s book, Queen of Scots (available to read on Oyster, too). Most people who know Elizabethan history are familiar with the story of the tragic Catholic queen, but you don’t really ever…
Normally I post on Thursday’s about the books I’ve finished. And I’ve had a ton of time to read while I’ve been away from my daughter and home responsibilities while traveling for my shoulder tests. I read two hours a day, at least. So you’d think I’d have all kinds of books I could post…
The fascinating story of Ernest Shakelton and his crew who were trapped in the Antarctic for three years is told in Endurance: Shakelton’s Incredible Journey. Shakelton wanted to be the first person to discover the South Pole. Another explorer took that honor from him, and so he decided to do something even more daring –…
First off, I had an article in The Digital Reader yesterday about NYPL and their Library Simplified project. If you’re at all into libraries, ebooks, and innovation, they are a good group to be watching. So, this week in books. I just finished Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, which I had initially purchased in paperback…
Ok, so I didn’t drop off the face of the planet before now. Those of you who follow my personal blog as well will know that I broke my shoulder in Chicago at the end of January. I had a nasty surgery with another fracture during surgery when my bone fragmented when the pins went…
I recently finished After Birth by Eliza Albert, a book that struck me because it was described as being honest about the period after a baby is born, which is always portrayed as being this beautiful joyous angelic time, but in reality is anything but. For a lot of women (myself included) it was a…
In my seemingly never-ending quest to get rid of all my physical books before we move (and buy an ebook of ones worth keeping, but getting rid of the physical book either way) I’ve been going through the stack of books that I’ve kept around which look interesting. One of these was Worldly Goods: A…
This past week I’ve been reading two books, one of which, by the previously-blogged-about-and-Monty-Python-esque Howard of Warwick was a murder mystery set in a monastery near Lincoln, and the other, a fairly scholarly book about King Oswald and Britain around the time of Bede, was mind-numbingly boring, though based on the Amazon reviews, I’m clearly…