My reading for the winter has been all over the map, from classics to YA fantasy to comedy, but the bulk of the winter was spent reading 2 800-page tomes — “Alexander Hamilton” which caused me to mediate deeply on our government and how it was created (spoiler alert, Thomas Jefferson, while very bright, well traveled, and well educated, comes off as a dick who would have completely approved of the Trump administration) and “The Romanovs: 1613-1918” which caused me to mediate about power and its abuses (spoiler alert, while we hear a lot about the successful Russian tsars, we don’t hear about the surprising number who met violent death at the hands of their own people, and even one of the most successful, Peter the Great’s reign, could only be described as a drunken circus, complete with midgets, giants, and people dropping dead from alcohol poisoning).
These two books are the motivation for the new book list I’m tracking called “Books for a Trump America”. Historical perspective gets me through the day without my head exploding.
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda
- The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
- Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
- The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer
- The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
- Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood
- Down with the Shine by Kate Karyus Quinn
- Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
- Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
- The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living by Paul Collins
I’m keeping my reviews and reading list here at Goodreads.com. Friend me there if you want to see what I’m reading now.
lheringer 