What I’m reading: quarantine bookshelf

After the usual crisis obsession with the news wore off for me after President PineSol speculated about disinfectant injections and ultraviolet enemas, I turned to my favorite information delivery device — the good old book. Here’s what I’ve been reading and not reading the past six weeks.

  1. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel. Apparently this is a bestselling post-apocalyptic flu book. I thought it sucked but I finished it. Cormac McCarthy she ain’t.
  2. The Stand: Stephen King. I’ve read it twice before and it’s still one of his best, but this time I didn’t make it very far.
  3. Travels in SiberiaIan Frazier: this as part of my research into my own book about Bethuel Handy’s shipwreck on the Siberian coast in 1858. A masterpiece of travel writing and one man’s obsession with an amazing place. That led me to ….
  4. Great Plains, also Ian Frazier: a nexploration of America’s great middle ground. I’m half-way in.
  5. The Baroque CycleNeal Stephenson. On the recommendation of my brother in law I started this uncompleted trilogy again. I’m in the first volume, Quicksilver, set in Boston and London during the plagues of 1666 and 1721. Loving it.
  6. Barry LyndonWilliam Makepeace Thackeray. Stanley Kubrick pulled this obscure gem off the shelf and made my favorite film from it. The book is brilliant.

Author: David Churbuck

Cape Codder with an itch to write

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