About

I used work in historic sites. Now I’m a communications manager. No matter what I’m doing professionally, for fun I let my inner wordnerd out to play. As a result, I read a lot. I’ve spent enough of my life reading not just for fun but reading critically that I can’t shake the need to write about what I read. Thus, this blog.

Books I’ve read in 2014:
1) The Blight of Muirwood, by Jeff Wheeler (Kindle)
2) Jim Henson: The Biography, by Brian Jay Jones
3) Longbourn, by Jo Baker
4) Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
5) The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (audio)

Books I read in 2013:
1) Letters of a Woman Homesteader, by Elinore Pruitt Stewart (Kindle)
2) The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner (Kindle)
3) Life Itself, by Roger Ebert
4) I Am the New Black, by Tracy Morgan
5) The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy, by Bill Carter
6) The Story Girl, by L.M. Montgomery (Kindle)
7) Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, by Elizabeth Keckley (Kindle)
8) Happy Accidents, by Jane Lynch
9) From an Anonymous Source, by SrWHOfficial (Kindle)
10) The Golden Road, by L.M. Montgomery (Kindle)
11) Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV, by Warren Littlefield and T.R. Pearson
12) Letters on an Elk Hunt by a Woman Homesteader, by Elinore Pruitt Stewart (Kindle)
13) O! Pioneers, by Willa Cather (Kindle)
14) My Antonia, by Willa Cather (Kindle)
15) The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
16) Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America, by Natasha Vargas-Cooper
17) Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
18) Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America, by Andrew Ferguson
19) Mudhouse Sabbath, by Lauren F. Winner
20) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, by Chuck Klosterman
21) Pride & Prejudice, by Nancy Butler (graphic novel of the Austen classic)
22) The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A.J. Jacobs
23) The Wretched of Muirwood, by Jeff Wheeler (Kindle)
24) One Summer: America, 1927, by Bill Bryson (Kindle)

Books I read in 2012:
1) The Lonely Land, by Sigurd F. Olson
2) Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), by Mindy Kaling
3) The Trial of U.S. Grant: The Pacific Coast Years, 1852-1854, by Charles G. Ellington
4) Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama
5) Solider’s Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point, by Elizabeth D. Samet
6) Just a Geek, by Wil Wheaton
7) The Happiest Toddler on the Block, by Harvey Karp, M.D.
8) Andrew Johnson, by Annette Gordon-Reed
9) The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
10) The Grace of Silence: A Memoir, by Michele Norris
11) Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
12) The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson
13) Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
14) A Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut
15) Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding
16) Up Till Now, by William Shatner (audio)
17) Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe (audio)
18) Heartburn, by Nora Ephron
19) Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, by Amanda Grange
20) Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr
21) Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen (Kindle)
22) This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation, by Barbara Ehrenreich
23) Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, by Ron C. White Jr.
24) Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (Kindle)
25) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Schafer
26) Bright’s Passage, by Josh Ritter
27) Lindbergh Looks Back: A Boyhood Reminiscence, by Charles A. Lindbergh
28) Lindbergh Alone, by Brendan Gill
29) Forward from Here: Leaving Middle Age–and Other Unexpected Adventures, by Reeve Lindbergh

Books I read in 2011:

1) In Her Shoes, by Jennifer Weiner
2) Sense and Sensibilty, by Jane Austen
3) Emma, by Jane Austen
4) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
5) Bossypants, by Tina Fey
6) Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
7) Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson
8) American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld
9) The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
10) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned, by Michael J. Fox (this book is so short I shouldn’t even count it, but I read it and I enjoyed it, so I’m counting it)
11) Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, by Kati Marton
12) The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan
13) When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins
14) Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein

Books I read in 2010:

1) Passing, by Nella Larsen
2) The British Museum is Falling Down, by David Lodge
3) A Woman of Independent Means, by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
4) The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed
5) Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less, by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin
6) Lord John and the Private Matter, by Diana Gabaldon
7) Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook, by Sarah Schmelling
8) James Madison, by Garry Wills
9) Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith
10) In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan
11) The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (Kindle app for iPhone)
12) Warriors Don’t Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High, by Melba Patillo Beals
13) Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace
14) Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota, by Chuck Klosterman
15) Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin
16) Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, by Julie Powell
17) The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger
18) Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella
19) Escape, by Carolyn Jessop
20) The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
21) The Ghost Writer, by Philip Roth
22) The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
23) Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
24) I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood, by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile
25) America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudgery, Helpmates and Heroines, by Gail Collins
26) On Writing, by Stephen King
27) A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson
28) The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, by Harlow Giles Unger
29) John Quincy Adams, by Lynn Hudson Parsons
30) The Passion of Artemisia, by Susan Vreeland
31) Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress, by Joseph Wheelan
32) Persuasion, by Jane Austen
33) High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
34) 1906, by James Dalessandro

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