The mention of antique furniture brings up memories of Home Ec class my senior year in high school.. I really do not understand why but the second semester of Home Ec was the study of furniture styles....Hepplewhite, Queen Anne, Chippendale (and not the male dancers at certain clubs darn it) American Federal, etc. ummmmmmmmm why would they think we would ever need that info. Most of us would be getting hand-me-downs from Mom and Gramma .
I have a well stocked library. Many horticultural books plus a good selection of reference books, as I do a lot of research. Fairly recently browsing Ebay, I found several disks of old books that have been scanned. These are very interesting and useful in research, especially horticulture and microscopy.
@toni I love your post! I just read Killers Of the Flower Moon by David Grann. It's about the beginnings of the FBI ( J Edgar Hoover) and centers on the multiple murders of members of the Osage tribe in OK. It turns out the tribal lands were located over a very lucrative oil field & the Osage were being picked off one by one for their oil rights. Fascinating discusión of the start of the FBI. A good read. Upsetting but easy to read. Reads like a mystery even though it is nonfiction.
Now I'm reading The Paris Library. The novel follows the life of a Parisian librarian & jumps back & forth between Paris during WWII and Froid Montana in the 1980's. Bit of a mystery about this librarian & her past. I'm enjoying it.
Currently I'm reading Civil War Stories by Webb Garrison. It is a compendium of snippets from diaries, official records, after the fact memories, and odd moments. Garrison didn't write the book, but was more of a research/editor.
That sounds interesting MG. I'm reading The Stationery Shop by Marian Kamali. It is set in Tehran during the fall of their democratic government & the rise of the Shah of Iran. It follows the life of a young woman through the upheaval of that society. Pretty interesting.
Now I'm reading Cosmic Queries by (you guessed it!) Neil DeGrasse Tyson with James Trefil. Reading this book is equivalent to having a pleasant conversation with a very intelligent, kind, and humorous person. For example, "no matter what you were taught in the third grade, people in the 15th century did not think the earth was flat. They had telescopes and could see the curvature of the earth." Even for those of us who are scientifically challenged, it's a heck of a good read!
I'm reading The Salt Path by Raynor Winn about a middle aged couple who lose their farm, the husband has developed a muscle wasting disease that is eventually fatal & homeless, they decide to hike the South Coast West Path in Wales. The story is about their journey. They have minimal money and camp roughly along the way. Interesting story.
I'm re-reading Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's book about antebellum life on plantations, both for white and black women. Interesting to me, since it gives a perspective on the social strata in the south, and the expectations of women, both black and white.
@JessieJim I read that! And enjoyed it. I just read Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Peter Simmons. It is set on a farm in New Hampshire and is a series of essays written by a man who is dying of ALS. Could be depressing, but I didn't find it so. Has anybody read Less?
If your like me at bed time I need to unwind either by watching a movie or reading . Here’s a quiet good book of stories for the gardener. “ The Gardener’s Bed-Book” by Richard Wright.
THE seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka. The protagonist is a war photographer who discovers that he is dead, having woken up in a Kafkaesque, cold, heartless bureaucratic afterlife waiting area along with countless others. He has seven moons to "finish" unfinished life business. The book won the Booker Prize in 2022.
