Category: Books

I speed read Catherine de Medici – Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda last week in order to finish it in time for the Newcomers Club Book Club. It is not an easy read and the author who is Swedish by birth and apparently speaks five languages loves using unusual words like bobbish, chimera and  tergiversations. In spite of the fact that reading the book is a bit of a slog, it reads like a text book, I did find it very interesting.

Renaissance France is fascinating. Catherine De Medici lived from 1519 to 1589, during the reigns of 5 French kings. One of them was her husband and three of them were her sons. This was a particularly violent period. There were constantly recurring religious wars (at least six), the St Bartholomew's Day massacre (for which Catherine was blamed), Burnings of protestants, and  political assassinations. Catherine survived and perhaps even thrived, shaping French politics through most of this period.

I am glad I read this book. I learned a lot about this period in history in general and French history in particular. It certainly helped me better understand the renaissance and the reformation.

Thanks to my friend Linda here are a few of the obscure words, their meanings and the page references.

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin and Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher – How's that for two ends of the spectrum.

I frequently read several books at one time and I just finished these two. Your Inner Fish is a fascinating book about evolutionary biology. Neil Shubin is a paleontologist, a professor of anatomy and a science writer. Coming Home is a family saga set in Cornwall before and during World War II. Rosamund Pilcher is a British author of romance novels and mainstream women's fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these books.

In Your Inner Fish Shubin uses his experience and knowledge about geology, anatomy, DNA, and fossil hunting to explain the  latest thinking about how man evolved. The book is fascinating and very readable. Here is an entertaining quote from the last chapter:

"Fish have gonads that extend toward their chest, approaching their heart. Mammals don't, and therein lies the problem. It is a very good thing that our gonads are not deep in our chest and near our heart (although it might make reciting the pledge of Allegiance a different experience). If our gonads were in our chest, we wouldn't be able to reproduce."

Coming Home is a very enjoyable book. It is the kind of English family saga that you can wrap yourself in and just feel good. It is set in Cornwall the part of England that Pilcher is from. Her descriptions of the countryside are wonderful and the people she writes about are people you want to have as friends. Sometimes I just want to read a feel good book and Coming Home is one of the best.

I've finished 3 more books. You can see the list of books I have read this year here. 

Coraline by Neil Gaiman adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell

I highly recommend this book. The original version of Neil Gaimon's Coraline was published in 2002. Last year Gaimon partnered with P. Craig Russell to publish a comic book style version of the book. Amazon calls it a graphic novel. It is a scary book about my kind of girl. Coraline Is brave, independent and she likes to explore. She and her family have just move into a big old house. The first sentence hooked me; "Coraline discovered the door a little after they moved into the house."

Street Fighters by Kate Kelly

Street Fighters is the story of the collapse of Bear Stearns. It was recommended by my friend Todd Jonz  who I interviewed in my podcast in June. I found the book fascinating. I could very much imagine being at Bear Stearns and living through this time. If I was an employee there I would have been so mad at the cowboy executives who apparently never took risk seriously. I read Street Fighters on my Kindle

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

The 19th Wife is really two stories. One is a modern murder mystery about a murder of a polygamist and the polygamist community he lives in. The other story is historical fiction. It is based on the life of one of Brigham Young's wives, Ann Eliza Young, who divorced him and went on to crusade against Polygamy in the late 1800's. I had never heard of her before so I learned a lot about the history of the Mormon church and about polygamy. I enjoyed the murder mystery but found the historical story much too long. It dragged. In spite of that The 19th Wife was worth reading.

I just finished reading Introducing C.B. Greenfield by Lucille Kallen. It a fun read, a mystery loaned to me by my very good friend Linda. It was published in 1979. One of the fun things about the book was the things referenced that are no longer a part of our life.

For example when Maggie is having Greenfield over for dinner she dressed in her "burgundy velvet pants and pale blue angora tunic" and puts records "on the record changer" later Greenfield "got up, turned over the records on the record changer, reset it, and sat down again."

This is my twentieth book read this year. You can see the whole list here.