(no subject)

36/50: 1776 by David McCullough. This truly masterful account of the second year of the American Revolution, read by the author, was a joy to listen to. I learned things that I had not known. I heard fleshed out narratives of which I knew only the bones. McCullough introduced me to figures of the period in a way that brought me a much closer and better understanding of them than I had ever gotten before. I am so glad that I have the hard copy of the book; I had not yet read it and took the opportunity to listen tot he unabridged recording from the library, but I know already that I will go back and read it again and again, as well as dipping into it for details for years to come.

37/50: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer. I read this before, maybe 25-30 years ago when it came out, and then saw the movie (which I think had Nicol Williamson and perhaps Alan Arkin). It's an interesting and agreeable reinvention of a portion of Sherlock Holmes's story, written (intentionally, I am sure) in the somewhat grandiloquent and dramatic style of the original "editor" of John Watson's accounts. It's rather sad to read this now, as it recalls a time when we were, as a society, all just coming to realise what a scourge and a danger cocaine use was, before the arrival of crack.

In progress
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Doom Castle by Neil Munro
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz