it's been a long time

I see that the last time that I posted here was in early January, about three months ago. Time has once again done it magic disappearing act, aided in this case by the growth and flowering of my relationship with the lovely asmanyaswill. I've done very little journalling, very little blogging, I've neglected most of my hobby projects, blown off the online courses I signed up for, not done any of the CPE that I'd had plans for...

Not that this should all, or even mostly, be laid at her door. I've gotten terrifically lazy, I have to confess. And that's not good; I need to get active again, intellectually and physically. Plus, because so many of my friends dropped LJ and took up That Other Social Networking Tool, I followed suit and have largely been posting there. It's great for sharing, and it's OK for discussions, but it isn't a good platform for writing or (with absolutely no tagging system) for finding and retrieving anything more than a few hours old. It's got all the retentive capability of a spaniel with Alzheimer's.

One thing I do keep up with, even if slowly, is reading. Both lilteral reading and book-listening during my commute. So, as a first post back, here's a recap of this year's reading so far (to the extent that I can recall it), not in chonological order.

a couple of re-reads
Shadows in Bronze by Lindsey Davis (1) (I find M. Didius Falco rather more tiresome than I did the first time I read Davis's series.)
The Hobbit by J.R.R.Tolkien (2) (redactrice has loaded it on my iPad over Thanksgiving vacation. Reminder that the original is a lot less like an X-Box game than the film version. And that JRRT was really not that great a story-teller when he started out.)
Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett (3) (Niccolo and his comrades venture from Venice to ?Cetua? to Madeira and thence to the Gambia. A fascinating look at western Africa and its interaction with Europe in the 15th century.)

and a couple of new titles
Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (4) (A huge and fascinating volume that makes me want to read its two older brothers and learn a great deal more about early Progressive politics.)

Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam by James McPherson (5) (A short but enjoyable read/listen that sketches the portion fo the war, both military and political, that preceeded the battle, then describes the battle itself and its immediate aftermath. Spends a good deal of time tracing public sentiment about the war in the USA, the CSA, and Europe through the letters, journals, and speeches of many people, some of them very familiar to viewers of Ken Burns's Civil War documentary.)

Really? Only five books in four months, and three of them re-reads? I think there have been a few others, but I can't recall them just now.

In progress

Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by MG Julian Thompson
Gentlemen Volunteers: The Story of the American Ambulance Drivers in World War I by Arlen J. Hansen (Some fo COl. Roosevelt's family worked in the American Hospital in Paris, which is mentioned here.)
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (I picked this as a trial for a free Kindfle app on my iPad)
The Captain From Connecticut by C. S. Forrester (several chapters in; odd to read Forrester wiring about an American)
French Napoleonic Infantry Tactics, 1792-1815 by Paddy Griffith
Enter Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy (Learning all sorts of interesting stuff about the influence of pre-Islamic Persian religion on early Christianity)
Boer Commando by Denneys Reitz
American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years After Yorktown, 1781-1783 by William M. Fowler, Jr.