Tag: books
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An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
Chris Hadfield couldn’t just be a fighter pilot, engineer, astronaut, photographer, musician, or the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station: he just had to be a damn good writer too. At one point in his superb memoir An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Hadfield describes what it’s like to exit the ISS into…
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A Novel Ninevember
Fiction usually isn’t my thing, but I want to get better at it. So I’m reading nine novels in November’s thirty days and writing about them here. I’ll update this post as I go along. Some spoilers, natch. Update: Just made it through the ninth book, with only hours to spare. I’m very glad to have deepened…
# books, Ender’s Game, Fahrenheit 451, fiction, Fortunately the Milk, Gilead, Jerry Spinelli, Lois Lowry, Marilynne Robinson, Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Paul Coelho, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Ray Bradbury, reading, review, Stargirl, Stephen Chbosky, The Alchemist, The Giver, The Ocean at the End of the Lane -
Information In The Little Way
Rod Dreher, in his new book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, writes about his sister Ruthie’s fight with lung cancer and about his complicated relationship with his family and small-town life in Louisiana. After her diagnosis, Ruthie told her doctors and loved ones not to tell her specifics about her condition, nor even how long…
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Rhinelander, Russia
Pushing through Command and Control, Eric Schlosser’s new book about America’s history with nuclear weapons. A fun tidbit: Strategic Air Command, the agency in charge of the Cold War bombers and missiles after World War II, used American towns for training their pilots: The town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, became one of SAC’s favorite targets, and it was…
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The Purple Rose of Heaven
Just read this in the peroration of N.D. Wilson’s (magnificent, challenging, tempestuous) Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: If the Maker of the world were to descend to earth, how would you expect him? If you heard that the Infinite, the Spirit Creator was entering into His own Art, wouldn’t you look to the clouds? Wouldn’t you…
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Stupid Is As Rosewater Does
If what happened to Maziar Bahari is the trend in Iran, the country just hasn’t figured it out yet. Bahari, an Iranian journalist, was imprisoned and tortured in Iran during the “Green Revolution” in Iran, which was the reformist response to the 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. His memoir Then They Came For Me details…
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James Mehdison
Finally made it through Ralph Ketcham’s James Madison: A Biography. Presidential biographies usually take longer to get through than other books, but I clamored for the end of this one. It’s funny how the POTUS books I’ve read thus far usually take on the characteristics of their subjects: Edmund Morris’ Theodore Roosevelt trilogy was expansive yet…
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A Ship-Shape Ticker
If I could bring back Google Maps to early eighteenth-century Britain, I’d be a millionaire. See, figuring out a ship’s longitudinal coordinates was a huge problem back then. So much so that the British Parliament offered a prize of what amounts to $2.2 million in today’s dollars to anyone who could produce a practical method…
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Twelve Years A Slave
I recently saw the above trailer for Steve McQueen’s upcoming film 12 Years a Slave and immediately got excited to see it on the merits of the trailer, cast, and director alone. But then at the library the following day I happened to see the memoir upon which the film is based and decided to read it.…
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The Pleasures of Whim
Brett McCracken was right to name Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction one of the five books recent college graduates should read. A quick yet deeply insightful read, this book was written, in the words of the author, for “those who have caught a glimpse of what reading can give—pleasure,…
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Rutherford B. Hazy (In History)
Marching onward in my quest to read a biography of every U.S. president, I finally made it through Ari Hoogenboom’s Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President. I confess to having held the same vague notions of Hayes that Hoogenboom writes he’s commonly known for: that he won the disputed 1876 presidential election, ending Reconstruction, and that…
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Action Andrew Jackson
When I look back on my nearly 19 years of classroom education in elementary, middle, high school, college, and grad school, I think I’ll remember my junior year AP U.S. history class in high school as my favorite. What I loved about it was what probably bored most other students in class: it was a…
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The Summum Bonum Identity
Someone on the Internet once said something to the effect of: “I’m not a writer; I write.” Writing, for example, is something you do, but it’s not who you are. You might really love writing and consider it integral to your life, but it isn’t your very essence–at least, it shouldn’t be. I’m re-reading Tim Keller’s The…
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Courage Under Fire Hoses
I just finished reading Hampton Sides’ Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr., a recounting of the assassination of the famous civil rights leader through the perspectives of the people involved in the run-up to and aftermath of King’s slaying. I highly recommend this book for its extensive background on King’s…
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Science Blows My Mind
Like many English majors, science and mathematics were two subjects that gave me trouble throughout my primary, secondary, and college education. I think it was geometry class sophomore year of high school where I hit a wall and everything after that was a blur. Ditto with chemistry that year (what in the name of Walter…
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Bringing Old Orthodoxies to a Boil
I just finished reading Fergus Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America, a history of the Underground told through a series of vignettes. I enjoyed learning about the unheralded individuals of all stripes who served on the Railroad as “stationmasters” or support staff along the way. But one particular…
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History Crush: Theodore Roosevelt
I recently stumbled upon the National Archives’ “History Crush” series, wherein archivists confess their undying love for certain historical figures like Susan B. Anthony, Charles Sumner, and Alexander Hamilton. This got me thinking about who mine would be. As a certified history nerd, I have many. But with a gun to my head, I’d probably…
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Cool Civil War Names: a preamble
Awhile back I read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, the sixth volume in Oxford University Press’s ongoing series of American history. (The full series list is worth checking out if you’re ever in the mood for thousands of pages of U.S. history—and who isn’t?) I learned a lot of things from McPherson’s tome, but most salient was that the men…