Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
I spent much of this past week being a Single Mama while my hubby was away in Amsterdam, and consequently, what with NaNoWriMo and Hannah refusing to nap because her schedule was all screwed up, etc., I haven’t had a lot of time to read. But with that said, I finished a biography of Mary…
I’m a big fan of the Messiah. Every year I go to a sing-a-long, and since I’ve been in LA it’s been at the Disney Center. I used to play my parents’ old record of the complete recording (vinyl, before it became trendy) and would study to it. I can whistle all four parts of…
I’ve said before that I’ve been clearing out my physical books the past few years; it’s my goal to eventually have my library only on my kindle, because then, when we move, I can just pack all my books in one teeny tiny box. I’m down to about 2-3 shelves, and working my way through them….
Because I spend a lot of time reading online publishing news, I kind of thought everyone’s heard about Oyster and Scribd, the two main ebook subscription services. I was recently reminded that most people don’t have their head stuck in digital publishing news the way I do, so I thought I’d talk about them here….
In my quest to turn my library completely digital and get rid of all my paper books, I’m finally catching up on some of the books that have been on my shelf for years, and one of those “finally” books is Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age by Fiona Maddocks. There’s a theme…
I’ve recently started reading The Greatest Traitor, The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327-1330, by Ian Mortimer. I’m a big fan of Ian Mortimer, having read his Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the 14th Century several years ago. He writes about some obscure history in a…
This blog is meant to be a sort of curated Museum of Heather’s Mind/What I would sell in a store of my Favorite Things. And if we were creating a physical space with all my favorite things, there would definitely be a corner devoted to Anne of Green Gables. When I was about 9, I…
This week I finished One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson. I first discovered Bill Bryson with his Notes from a Big Country column he wrote when he returned home to the US after living in the UK for 20 years. I had only lived in the UK for two years, but I also found myself…
I’ve been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism about, well, Roosevelt, Taft, and journalists (as the name would so cleverly imply). Doris Kearns Goodwin was actually my university’s commencement speaker the year I graduated, though I don’t really remember much about it except for…
I’ve been reading The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester, a history of the US told through the elements of wood, metal, water, fire, and air, which is an interesting lens through which to view history. The wood chapter, for example, was all about when wood was the primary material; the homes the early…