lookingland

for the

no. 6 ~ Photographic Atlas of Civil War Injuries: Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens, Otis Historical Archives by julian e. kuz. the first of kuz's books (this being the big mamalinchi of medical photography). i confess i caved and ordered a copy of this one for myself. couldn't see my way around having it and the library wants their copy back. it cost me, but it's worth it. when you have a definiitive text, you have a definitive text. not much more you can say about it.

no. 7 ~ The Hawkline Monster: a Gothic Western by richard brautigan. i enjoyed this until the departure from reality was so great that it rendered the outcome utterly pointless. call me an old-fashioned girl, but i like my surrealism to have a throughline. this was entertaining and mercifully a quick read. if it had been any longer, i would not have had the patience for it. i guess overall that's a wee disappointing for a book i've been looking to read for over a year. oh well.

i love the idea of the three-story
yellow house in the middle of the yellow field
surrounded by a ring of snow.

no. 8 ~ Little Stories by silas weir mitchell. i have no idea what i find so fascinating about this guy's writing. there's nothing special about it. it leans a little dark and a little "fabulous". maybe just knowing the undercurrents makes it more fraught or something. this little book was interesting enough that i'll try one of his larger works. see what he can do.

no 9 ~ Rehabilitating Bodies: Health, History, and the American Civil War by lisa a. long. it's taken me a long time to work my way through this one (and i confess i skimmed a chapter on gender and a chapter on race). although this book isn't what i thought it would be about, it's proved an invaluable roadsign for other, more relevent sources. i was looking for something more literally along the lines of the title, but this is an academic work on the body of early post-war literature and the mythologizing (and romanticizing) of the war, etc. it does talk a great deal about health, but the rehabilitation here is almost purely literary. very dense writing, but yielded a lot of interesting things (including dr. mitchell, above).

i'm glad i stuck with it even though it wasn't what i was looking for and will prolly talk about it more later.

i'll prolly finish Madden's Sharpshooter tonight. and here i thought i wouldn't step up to the challenge. i'm doing okay so far! whooo!

: D

and it's all sorts of snowing outside right now!