Immediate Book Meme: Darwin's Reading

I think I've only dipped into MrsDarwin's immediate book meme once or twice, in part because MrsDarwin reads much faster than I do and gets through more books.  However, this time I felt inspired to chime in with my own reading.

photo by Evan Laurence Bench

There are plenty of memes that want to know all about your book history and your all-time greats and your grand ambitions, but let's focus on something more revealing: the books you're actually reading now, or just read, or are about to read. Let's call it The Immediate Book Meme.

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1. What book are you reading now?

Audiobook:

The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 by Chris Wickham

I started reading this because I was trying to decide whether to use it as part of the history/literature program for our sophomore, who will be wrapping up with Roman history in the last third of this year and needs to cover up to about 1000. I won't be assigning it. It's too detailed for that student, but I'm finding the dive into Late Antiquity interesting and I tend to be a completist, so I'll finish it up myself.

Dead Tree Reading:

The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World by Patrick Wyman

I've listened to Wyman's Fall of Rome podcast, and the ancient history seasons of his Tides of History podcast, so I picked up this book both to support the author and because the structure of telling about 1490 through 1530 via the lives of ten individual people sounded interesting.

After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5,000 BC by Steven Mithen

I picked this up based on recommendations from pre-history resources that I was reading online, and it's a fascinating and slightly offbeat approach to describing what we know of the peoples who lived in dozens of prehistoric sites from the last glacial maximum to shortly before the development of writing, off beat due to Mithen's conceit of having a character, John Lubbock (named after a real life Victorian archeologist) travel through time and see what life was like in each of these sites, while at the same time the narrator is describing the digs and often his personal experiences with them. It's an unusual narrative device for a book which is not by any means light reading.  Mithen is an academic archeologist and this is the kind of book which is readable but very detailed.

2. What book did you just finish?

My finishing of books has been slow lately.  I've been listening to a lot of history podcasts, which has slowed down my reading of audiobooks.  And I just have been short of time for reading hard copy books.  But these are my last two:

Audiobook:

The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart

Yes, I'm still working on those novels, and thus still doing research reading for them.  Hart's book is heavier on first hand accounts (mostly British) and lighter on the development of military tactics, but it's definitely a good read for what it's doing.  (My favorite Somme history remains Philpott's Three Armies on the Somme.

Dead Tree Reading:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Weir's third novel is much more in the vein of his first, The Martian, than his sophomore work, Artemis (which I didn't enjoy much.)  A deep character study it is not, but the main character is enjoyable and it whisks the reader through one well described technical problem after another.  Weir is definitely the kind of novelist you'll enjoy if you liked the early days of hard SF.

3. What do you plan to read next?

The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian

I feel like I've been lacking in fiction reading lately.  It's almost two months since I took a weekend off to read Project Hail Mary.  And the Audible credits have been piling up, so I already queued the next book my in re-read through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels.  Actually, I'd only made it half way through the series before, so this is the first one that I haven't read before.

August 1914: A Novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You can see why a massive series of novels spanning the history of WW1  and the Russian Revolution would appeal to me.  Plus, it's Solzhenitsyn.  I've had a copy sitting on my shelf tempting me for a while.  Gotta pick it up.

Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader

I may be kidding myself that I'm going to make it through another big history tome not related to WW1 this year in hard copy, but this was the other book that I acquired when I was on my ancient and pre history kick, and I'm curious about it because... well, humanity came out of Africa (and this book goes all the way back to the geologic past) and yet the history of the continent seldom gets covered in any comprehensive fashion.  I'm fairly excited to read it.

4. What book do you keep meaning to finish?

Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

This book of interviews with Russians about the waning days of the Soviet Union and its aftermath is fascinating (and depressing) and I keep meaning to finish it but have been in the middle of it for over a year.

Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel

Collected short vignettes written by Babel for Soviet newspapers portraying his colorful and often brutal experiences with a Red cavalry unit fighting in the Polish War against Polish forces in Ukraine and Poland, this was fascinating primary source material and yet somehow it's been sitting half finished on my nightstand for a long time.  It's easy to stop, because most of the stories are completely self contained.  And one doesn't always feel like a pleasant evening's ultra violence.

And of course, like MrsDarwin, I have completely failed to finish:

Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, by Rebecca West

5. What book do you keep meaning to start?

I always feel like saying I'll read a novel condemns me to not reading it.  Indeed, I'm almost afraid I've cursed the books in question 3 by listing them, so I'll leave it at that.

6. What is your current reading trend?

History which I'm inspired to read by various intellectual rabbit holes.