I'm beginning to think I should make this a weekly thing on this blog since this is the third time I've done this on a Saturday.
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. I've finally started it, although there's not much to say about a relatively straight forward history book without blubbering meaninglessly about the writer's style or regurgitating facts like a bored high school student. What I do find interesting is the author's motivation for writing about Australian history--he wrote it because Australians couldn't or wouldn't talk about their past. This former British colony began as a social experiment by shipping convicts off to this "fatal shore." It was pretty much a virtual death sentence because these men and women who had been deported did not know anything about surviving this strange continent's wilderness. At any rate, a far cry from American and Canadian history.
The Double Helix by James D. Watson. Taking into account that all the events in the book happened before Watson turned 25, well, it's both amazing and amusing. (Amusing, because of all his antics in trying to meet "pretty girls" and besides DNA, only having one thing on his mind even if the closest he could get to it was watching bacterial mating.) I think a recommendation handwritten by an anonymous "Michael" on the cover page of the 1968 Atheneum copy I was reading is quite appropriate:
You can be invincibly ignorant about science--as I am--and still relish the excitement of the book--as I did. The enormous enthusiasm, intellectual torment, honest jockeying to place and great verve make it a memorable story of men at work. I thought it splendid!
Going to read: I am probably going to finish The Fatal Shore by the end of the weekend. After that, I'll be starting on Quicksilver which pretty much every nerd in the blogosphere has already read. If you look at the books read in All Consuming, you'll notice that they're on the second volume now which I probably won't get to until maybe next year. I'm also going to read Truth or Dare by Jayne Ann Krentz which is what some people call "romantic suspense". It sounds like a stupid genre (and it is) but this is the stuff you read when you want to get away from the usual stuff and don't want to use your brain. But at least Krentz does witty dialogue.
