lookingland

still chipping away, ever so slowly, at Quicksilver. i'm less than 200 pages in and continue to feel that it is heavy-handed, but entertaining.

meanwhile, i thought i ought to log a few books i read this month as research for NaNo. nothing terribly exciting here, but every book counts toward the

50bookchallenge!

no. 38 ~ The Patapsco: Baltimore's River of History by paul j. travers ~ didn't like the way this book was organized. it had some interesting and useful information, but required churning through a lot of stewage to get to it. someone remarked in some other review (i think on amazon) that this is like a bunch of essays thrown together, and i agree.

no. 39 ~ The American Tintype by floyd rinhart, marion rinhart, and robert w. wagner ~ the most interesting thing about this book is that it opens with the line: "There is no tin in a tintype". beyond that it strikes me as almost a vanity press volume (put out by ohio state university press), with a substantial sampling of images, but nothing particularly spectacular. it has detailed chapters on the photographic processes, but the history is rather dry here and the lackluster images are poorly described. i had been curious about this book because it sells on amazon for a whalloping $78! but there's really nothing here to justify the price tag. it's neither comprehensive, nor visually stunning enough to make any sort of impression. boo.

i picked up Flashman and the Angel of the Lord by george macdonald fraser. i want to read this and geraldine brooks' pulitzer prize-winning March in between the long haul of stephenson's cycle.