The librarians showcase books at our library and it saves me the bother of looking through the shelves. Books should be placed where their covers can be seen. So far, this book isn’t so much about the children but how much the Mothers had it up to here with the men leaving them with the kids. And the kids sure seem to get a lot of laudanum, which is what kept them nice and quiet in those covered wagons heading west.
Very interesting, and not surprising. If mothers of the 20th and 21st Centuries had had methods of turning off our children without any reason to believe such methods were harmful, you can bet we would’ve used 'em sometimes. Not sure how else you’d get across the prairie.
I’m reading The Wolf in the Parlor by Jon Franklin. He is exploring the nature of the relationship between human and canine.
edit: forgot to mention, The Wolf is my elliptical trainer book for now. Our read-aloud selection at the moment is At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. Read-aloud is typically Bryson. We can read them over and over, and I can do funny accents for some of them.
I’m reading one of the most tedious books I have ever read at the moment. But I got it for a Christmas present, so I feel I have to … “The History of Tractors in Ukrainian”. It’s a novel. It just isn’t worth saying what it’s about.
Mind you, a couple of books ago I read what must be one of the best books I’ve ever read: Barnaby Rudge by Dickens. It’s about the Gordon Riots in 1790, an episode in UK history that I previously knew nothing about, but which I now realise I should have done, because it had a significant impact in shaping not just the UK, but the whole world as we know it today. Because of those riots (anti-Catholic riots) the UK lost its friends in Europe and that made it incapable of winning the American War of Independence. Maybe we’d have lost it anyway, but we’d have lost in a different way, and the world would have been different. When, later, the British Empire started to crumble, we’d have had closer ties to Europe and may not have lost control so quickly and fully. And those riots led, by proving it to be necessary, eventually to the creation of a police force in the UK. The reparations paid to Catholics who had had their property destroyed in the riots put local taxes for Londoners up for more than a century afterwards.
And, in any case, what a fantastic book! Poe was fascinated with it, and nicked at least one chapter almost wholesale for one of his short stories. He also got the inspiration for The Raven from the character of the raven, Grip, in Barnaby Rudge.
I’m re-reading Kristen Britain’s Green Rider books in anticipation of the fourth volume coming out in about a month. I think they’re the best heroic fantasy books that have come out in years.
Yeah, I thought this might explain the personalities of some of our West Coast friends.
I’m going to read your book, soon as I’m done with mine. This will either torment my wife because I’m a slow reader or she’ll tell me she read this already. I’ve heard of your book.
I know I’ve probably mentioned this book before: “Inside of a Dog” by Alexandra Horowitz. It’s about looking at the world from a dog’s point of view. I saw some folks yesterday bike riding with their Border Collie in a tailer for a little 46 mile jaunt. Looked like fun. 
I had an ecology professor at Wisconsin,(no bed of Roses this year 
) who grew up back in the days of laudanum. I gather he became quite enamored with it for some years while growing up. Claims he “always” had a cough that needed a spoonful or two. As he got older he discovered that the cannabis growing wild along the road sides with a lot of traffic was more potent than the stuff that would just pop up in prairies, farmer’s fields, and folk’s yards.
I’m currently reading a book in Irish called “Gluaisteach,” by Alan Titley. It’s a novel built around the story of a boy from Africa (they don’t specify, but I think it’s meant to be The Sudan) who is forced from his homeland by the massacre of his village.
Redwolf
Evening in the Palace of Reason by James R. Gaines.
Here’s a review, far better than I could muster. Riveting, edge-of-yer-seat stuff. It’s had me verklempt and grabbing for the smelling salts like an oil-burning junkie. 
No, but seriously; it’s a good read, and I recommend it for the writer no less than the subject. 
Have to quote Mark Twain. “Outside of a dog, a book is mans best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read”
But in terms of books I am reading Raymond Fiest (Fantasy), and Christopher Stasheff (Sci fi/fantasy/bad jokes)
John
Recently read Donita K. Paul’s books The Vanishing Sculptor and Dragons of the Valley. It may have been just me, but it seemed like Dragons of the Valley was a bit disappointing. I liked her previous 6 better.
Currently working on N. D. Wilson’s 100 Cupboards trilogy. Finished the first book (100 Cupboards, you guessed it) and will soon start on the second, Dandelion Fire. Slightly confusing, but pretty good all around.
I enjoy good fiction, what can I say?
Typically the “Outside of a dog” quote is attributed to Marx, Groucho Marx. Stasheff stuff is usually great fun, I’ve read a lot of his work more than once
Recently I have been reading Accelerando by Charles Stross (a UK writer who is based in Queensferry, near Edinburgh).
It’s good fun. It loses its impetus towards the end - or maybe I mean I do. But it’s worth it for the first three chapters alone. Only if you like Science-Fiction, though.
At the Bear Feast I picked up a book called Shamanism and Culture by Juha Pentikäinen. It’s an academic book about Northern Cultures in Scadinavia and Russia. I enjoyed it. Some chapters are no more than academic word-whittling. Where there is hard information, it is engrossing.
For Christmas I got 61 Hours by Lee Child. FB friends might have spotted me grumbling about it. Child is an English author writing for an American readership, and his Mexican Villain is 4’11", “a freak, and practically a midget”. I think that’s careless research. My sisters (who were visiting today) are not more than 5’ nothing, and they aren’t midgets. 4’11" is within 5 inches of the average Mexican height, according to Wiki. The height is integral to the story. It just irks a bit.
Freedom by Amnesty International. A worthy book, but not a fun read. It has short stories by a variety of authors and most of them are harrowing. One called “Freedom” by Arthur Mosley is a good read with a happy ending, but most are not. I haven’t finished this one yet.
Red Herrings and White Elephants by Albert Jack. This is one of these Christmas non-books. It purports to tell you the origins of idiomatic expressions in English.
English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David. I know which sister got me this one. One of my sisters worships at the shrine of Elizabeth David. This looks like an interesting book, though. It’s not just recipes, but histories and information about flour, yeast, sugar and heaven knows what else. I only got it today. It includes recipes for Whigs and for Singing Hinnies. This is the sort of recipe book I can read in bed.
‘Paddy Clark, Ha Ha Ha’, by Roddy Doyle. I’m almost through it, and can’t say I’m captivated. Sometimes it all comes together at the end, though.
I’m on vacation, so I’m doing light reading…mostly because I’ll have about 20 books to read during the course of the semester. So…I’m reading Joyce’s The Dubliners, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and I may do a re-read of Wharton’s Age of Innocence simply because I love that book. I just have to have them done before I start my classes on the 24th.
I did also read the new Sookie Stackhouse book, which is completely inane but still entertaining 
I believe that’s Groucho Marx, although I’ve also seen it attributed to James Thurber.
I’m sorry properly said it’s “Marx…wait for it…Groucho Marx.” My dogs don’t eat books, but they love toilet paper rolls, they’ll actually show up as faint smudges in an x-ray, you can tell it’s a TP roll too.
Do I want to know how you found that out? 
don’t encourage him
Speaking of Mark Twain, I’m in the midst of his recently released autobiography. This is only volume 1, and it runs near 800 pages. This is NOT a sequential autobiography-- it’s culled from many of his notes, dictations etc. Huge, heavy book, and it’s sometimes slow going so I have been reading a hundred or two pages, then putting it aside for something lighter eg a Dirk Pitt novel, then back to Twain. Interesting stuff though.