I can't think of anything I like better than a gift certificate at Amazon or B & N. Well, I guess there are a few things I covet like the new super-duper Kindle and a $1500 telephoto lens for my canon 7d. But these are in the wishful thinking category.
If there is one thing I need, it is more books. A new book always seems more appealing than an old book. A book can get old in one day if a new one comes along tomorrow.
So here is my new stack of reading material:
- True Compass: a memoir, by Edward M. Kennedy. Actually, this book was a gift from my sister-in-law, who correctly surmised that the Palin bio or the Beck thing would not be especially welcomed.
- Keynes: the Return of the Master, by Robert Skildesky. Skildesky is a renowned biographer of Keynes. As the book jacket states, "Why, sixty years after his death, John Maynard Keynes is the most important thinker for America." I know Keynes is not the most critically important topic for most of my readers, but I'll have more to say about the role of Keynes and Keynesian economics in my doctoral work at the University of Michigan after I read the book. A Business Week 10 best books of the year book.
- Too Big to Fail: the inside story of how Wall Street and Washington fought to save the financial system--and themselves, by Andrew Ross Sorkin. A Business Week 10 best books of the year book.
- Farm Girl, by Karen Jones Gowen, a coming-of-age story of a 1920s Nebraska farm girl.
- Growing up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl, by Carol Bodensteiner. I'm interested in these last two books to see if they give me any ideas about revising my earlier memoir about growing up on a farm in northwestern Wyoming for possible publication.
- The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl by Ree Drummond. Even my wife liked looking through this book. I have bought recipe books for decades, mostly just to read and think about cooking stuff in them, but rarely doing it. Typically, the recipe books have piled up and been tossed out. This book shows some promise. A combination of personal history, personal photographs, and detailed photograpic details of her best recipes, the book is fun and entertaining. You may have noticed the previous link on this blog to The Pioneer Woman. If you haven't looked at it yet, you are just simply too busy and should waste not another second until you dig into it.
I'll have more to say about these books after I read them. Meanwhile, if any of you want to read along with me, be my guest and we'll share thoughts and reactions after we're through. Oh yes, the pomeganate was thrown in for an artsy still life effect. I buy two or three of them a year and try not to squirt gorgeous pomegranate juice all over the kitchen sink and floor while I chew up the seeds. A lovely, lovely fruit.
