Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800 Jeff Sypeck
A short, readable history of the late 790s AD, when Karl, king of the Franks, manouvered his way to being crowned Charles, Emporer of the Romans.
The late 8th century was more interesting than I realized. Recommended
All Systems Red Martha Wells
A sentient cyborg investigates the disappearance of a crew exploring a distant planet.
Recommended
Finished Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by Sam Gosling. Meh.
Now I’m reading a dark fantasy called All the Murmuring Bones, by A. G. Slatter.
That I’m a bloody packrat with an over developed sense of sentimentality?
Just finished:
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte
Last Stand at Khe Sanh: The U.S. Marines’ Finest Hour in Vietnam, by Gregg Jones
Now reading:
A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, by Caroline Moorehead
Gangsters Vs Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America, by Michael Benson
Next up:
Perhaps Citizen Soldiers, by Stephen E Ambrose, or The Destruction of the Bismarck, by David J Bercuson and Holger H Herwig.
Finished listening to Better Off Dead, a Reacher novel by Lee Child and Andrew Child.
Not the best in the series.
Finished Robert Crais’ VooDoo River, started Sunset Express.
I finished reading Cesar Cascabel by Jules Verne, the last of my trifecta of Verne books (I like reading Verne in the summer. And I still haven’t read all his books), the other two being The Family Without a Name and The Green Ray. I think I’ve already commented on the last two.
Cesar Cascabel is the story of a French family of itinerant performing artists. They’ve just secured their savings in a strongbox, preparatory to returning to France (which the kids have never seen – they were born in the US), when they’re robbed of it all. The Head of the Family, Cesar, decides that they’ll still get to France – they’ll walk there. Their journey starts in Sacramento, goes through Russian Alaska (the book, though written in 1890, is set in 1865), then across the frozen Bering Strait to Siberia.
This sounds insane, for various reasons, the chief one being that I didn’t think the Bering Strait ever actually froze over. The Wikipedia article on it claims it never does. But I checked 19th century sources, and found that even the US Hydrographic Survey from 1890 thought that it did. So Verne at least had contemporary authorities on his side. It’s still hard to believe his travelers going across the tundra in the gypsy cart they lived in.
In fact, part of the journey they spend riding on an adrift ice floe – a dodge Verne used earlier in his 1873 novel The Fur Country. Hard to believe, but well-written. My only real complaint was the absurd cover the publisher slapped on it:
Now I’m reading a history of the 1890s bicycling craze in Boston – a book I bought from the author (I’ve read several books that I purchased from the authors this summer). I’m also reading D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which is infinitely more interesting. Imagine that.
On audio, I’ve finished Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Not sure what to move on to next.
I’ll be going on a brief vacation soon, and we’ll probably listen to an audiobook in the car. I’ll also bring several books with me – I suspect I’ll go with D.H. Lawrence rather than cycling. I also have a copy of Edmond Hamilton’s The Star Kings (in its original pulp magazine – Amazing Stories from September 1947. ). And I have several other possibilities. I find that on vacation I go through a book a day, or so.
Finished All the Murmuring Bones, by A. G. Slatter, which I enjoyed.
Now I’m reading How the Barbarian Invasions Shaped the Modern World: The Vikings, Vandals, Huns, Mongols, Goths, and Tartars Who Razed the Old World and Formed the New, by Thomas J. Craughwell.
The Kaiju Preservation Society John Scalzi - A laid-off man gets a new job as part of a group of scientists on a paralell Earth where there are no mammals, but there are giant Godzilla-like creatures. As the authors’ notes admit, this is meant to be a silly, entertaining, pop song of a novel, and it is. Recommended.
Euler’s Gem David Richeson - A history and celebration of topology, focusing on Euler’s formula for polyhedra, F + V - E = 2. It’s intended for a general audience, and the first two-thirds or so of the book is easy to follow. But by the end, discussing modern topology, you get sentences like “… the Euler-Poincare characteristic of any nonorientable closed manifold of odd dimension is also zero.” Stil, I enjoyed it overall, even if I didn’t understand everything.
Finished This Time Tomorrow, and I have to go back to the rice cake analogy. It was just barely interesting enough to keep me from tossing it aside, and I never did like the main character.
Started today on Blackout: a thriller by Erin Flanagan. It’s about a woman who has quit drinking, but begins to have blackouts in which she apparently continues to do things she doesn’t remember. On page 63, and I am not yet thrilled, but I think something’s about to happen. 
Ditched Blackout today. God I’m bored.
I finished Empire of Sin last night and I can’t really recommend it. It was too much of a hot mess. The book began with a murder committed by the Axman of New Orleans in 1919, then it went into the anti-Italian riots in the 1890s, then it went into the creation of the original Storyville (the licenced vice district) and all the madams and prostitutes that lived there, then it went into the birth of jazz, then it went back and forth between the sex and jazz for a while until WWI started and Storyville got shut down and then it went back to the Axman murders, then it went back to the end of Storyville and the beginning of the modern tourist trade in New Orleans.
And it was all pretty much like that run-on sentence.
Personally I feel there was too much Storyville and not nearly enough murder and jazz.
I started on Wahala by Nikki May and I’m holding out hopes that it’s better. One of my grad school buddies liked it. I respect her taste in African literature, so that’s a plus. (Although we will never agree on Nadine Gordimer.)
Finished How the Barbarian Invasions Shaped the Modern World: The Vikings, Vandals, Huns, Mongols, Goths, and Tartars Who Razed the Old World and Formed the New, by Thomas J. Craughwell, which was interesting.
Now I’m reading Under Lock and Skeleton Key, by Gigi Pandian.
Just started listening to Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. First time I’ve read anything by this author.
I started Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi on audio today because I had an hour + ride home from a dropoff. Wil Wheaton is… an enthusiatic narrator, I must say. 
I gave up on that after my customary 50 pages, but highly recommend his A Gentleman in Moscow. A much better-written and more engaging book, I thought.
It’s okay after the first hour of listening. The jury is definitely still out, however.
Either way, I’ll certainly try your recommendation.
Finished Under Lock and Skeleton Key, by Gigi Pandian. Not recommended.
Now I’m reading The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire, by Jack Weatherford.
Started today on The Measure by Nikki Erlick. It’s a novel in which mysterious boxes arrive for everyone in the world. Inside the box is a string, and the length of the string corresponds to the length of the person’s life. It’s a really interesting concept, and so far it’s been fun to see what effects the knowledge might have on society, although reviews like “Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is a sweeping, ambitious, and invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest” make me wonder if it’s going to turn into a big pile of mush.
Finished The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire, by Jack Weatherford, which is fascinating history. It’s one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.
Now I’m reading The Little Bookroom, by Eleanor Farjeon. It’s a collection of her fairy tales.