Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Off the shelf...

Just finished reading Absinthe & Flamethrowers because, duh, Absinthe & Flamethrowers! Also finished The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America, because I may find myself in New England again before too long, and this is the bomb-diggity-shizznit of books I've read on the topic thus far. It's easy, readable, and runs from Kennewick man through Greenlanders killing skraelings and all the way up through the aftermath of the Seven Years' War that led more or less directly to the Revolution. Recommend.

Now I'm re-reading The Gift of Fear. And then I'm going to bed.

7 comments:

  1. Ancient Woodsman9:38 PM, March 20, 2012

    Thanks for the note on The First Frontier. I'll have to check that out. I live about five miles from the gravestone of the man from whom my family bought land from in 1664 - land which I still own - and drove home tonight over a road on which another of my ancestors was ambushed by natives in 1720...there's a lot of rich history here in New England, and that book looks like a neat trip through some of the same kind of stuff.

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  2. Ever actually drank real absinthe, Tam? Despite what the uninformed might tell you, it's available again in the US, although not in all jurisdictions yet. I keep meaning to order a bottle to try out, but somehow never get around to doing so on payday.

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  3. Not sure how much time you'll have for sightseeing, but the town we used to live in (Sudbury, MA) had a big battle in King Philip's War. The militia fell to a man, but so thrashed the attacking indians that they saved the town (and the rest of Massachusetts; it was the frontier back then).

    Not a lot to see, but perhaps worth a detour if you're near.

    Or for a surfeit of Yankee je ne sai quois, Camden ME has a monument to the boys who died in the Great Rebellion, 1861-1865. Kind of far to go for a bunch of Yankee je ne sais quois, though.

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  4. When I die and am confronted by St. Peter, he's going to look at the list of 7 sins and the pages and pages of check marks next to "Jealousy". Most of which revolve around Tam.

    When I get a book, I make sure I've got a good 2 weeks available to read it. By the time I've hit the last page, I'm probably going to have to skim through it a few times to remember what I just read. I want to be able to read a book in a single sitting, but my brain doesn't work that way. Too many shiny things to distract me.

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  5. Darn it! Just when I'd gotten my "Books waiting to be Read" pile down to a semi-manageable size . . .

    LittleRed1

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  6. The Gift of Fear is the one book everyone I know, no matter where they are on the political spectrum, thinks is AWESOME except for That One Chapter. It's just a different chapter depending.

    I have not read it.

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