Finished Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, by Erik Larson. About the September 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, killing 8000, give or take. Also tells the story of Isaac Cline, the chief meteorologist in Galveston at the time and who lost his pregnant wife in the storm. Very good, but the subtitle really should read the Deadliest Hurricane in US History, as while it is the worst natural disaster in American history, 8000 is a paltry figure compared with the hundreds of thousands routinely killed in Bangladesh’s cyclones. I especially found it interesting because in school in West Texas in the 1960s and ‘70s, we learned next to nothing about it. Barely a mention. As I recall, the state history texts ran something like, “… blah, blah, blah. Then there was a big hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900, killing many people. And in other history, …” And that was all.
Finished Play Nice, it was cozy. Also gory, but there was a lot more in the story about what people were eating and wearing than what the evil entity was doing.
Started today on Replaceable You: adventures in human anatomy. Like all Mary Roach books, it’s really interesting and amusing. That said, I probably won’t finish it. I’m up to the chapter about using pig organs in people, and it’s not “sparking joy”. I’ll skim a bit further before I take it back to the library this weekend.
Finished it, and enjoyed it. It has a very satisfying and mostly-happy ending.
My next audiobook is Rick Atkinson’s new book The Fate of the Day, the second in his trilogy about the American Revolution. This one covers the people, politics, diplomacy, society, economics and warfare of 1777-1780. I’m not too far into it yet, but like his first, The British Are Coming, it’s excellent.
I’m also nearly finished with Jim Bishop’s 1955 short history, The Day Lincoln Was Shot. He has a dry, journalistic tone that works well as he describes, hour by hour, what happened; even knowing how it turns out, it’s still a tense and very engaging account.
I’m reading The Cadaver Princess by Chuck Rothman, who is a Doper (I can’t remember which one) and I’m enjoying it very much. It’s a historical fantasy where 12-year-old Princess Victoria unexpectedly shows up as a zombie in a surgeon’s anatomy lab. Even though it deals with black magic, the tone is more fun than dark. I’ve always been fascinated by this era of history, perhaps because of the stark class divide – a theme that also shows up in this book. I think I’m actually gonna finish this one.