Recent Reads
Since I've moved to the city, I've been reading like crazy. I've always been a total book nerd, but as I got older it seemed like the only time I had to read was right before bed. This meant that in most cases I would could barely read two pages before nodding off. Of course there were still books able to triumph over my geriatric fatigue, like the Hunger Games trilogy, Gone Girl and Julia Child's My Life in France, but they were few and far between.
Now that I spend a great deal of my day on public transportation, however, I read all the time. Add to that my new day job as a designer for the publisher W. W. Norton— I get a 70% discount on all of our titles — plus frequent trips to the dollar racks at the Strand, and I've been devouring books left and right.
Inspired by Kaylah's "What I've Been Reading" feature (we even seem to have very similar taste in books), I decided to periodically review the books I've been reading. Up first:
The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch
My interests have always tended toward the side of creepy, and I'm fascinated by anything to do with dead bodies or the funeral industry. Earlier this year I read Stiff, which reinvigorated my thirst for knowledge on all things dead. Thomas Lynch is a famous poet, but he's also the son of an undertaker, and now runs the family business. The Undertaking wasn't as interesting as Curtains (a Kaylah suggestion - thank you!), but Lynch has some interesting thoughts on death as well as life. It's a fairly quick and easy read, but don't expect many gory details — to be honest, it was kind of disappointingly tame for my macabre tastes.
The Devil in the Shape of Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen
This was definitely the most disappointing of the four, and the one that I was actually the most excited about. Witchcraft! Colonial New England! How could you possibly go wrong? I am so interested in that time period and the idea of witches that I was expecting to be enthralled but, alas, I was not. The book is much more scientific and much less narrative than I had hoped. It mostly read like a really dry, statistic-heavy textbook, and lacked description that may have kept me more interested. I struggled to finish it, but I did end up learning more about the causes and effects of the witchcraft hysteria, so it wasn't a total loss.
Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age by Mathew Klickstein
I wrote about the night at the 92nd Y centered around the new book, Slimed! a few weeks ago, and I finished the book soon afterwards. The oral history format was a bit hard to follow at times, and I did wish for more of a narrative structure, but overall it was a fun read. I'm still so familiar with every show covered in the book, and reading about what took place behind the scenes was a real treat. The 10-year-old in me relished every random fact, while the 28-year-old in me is still jealous that the book was written by a guy who is basically the same age as me. If you spent even half the time I did as a kid parked in front of a TV tuned to Nickelodeon, you won't regret reading this book.
The Inheritor's Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder and the New Forensic Science by Sandra Hempel
I just finished this history of arsenic poisoning yesterday, and it was definitely my favorite of the four listed here. The book is half informative science, half murder mystery and I wasn't bored for a second. It's also quite a quick read, and the author mixes in enough nerdy science to make you feel as if you learned something, while being simultaneously entertained by various cases of real-life whodunits, all involving (or allegedly involving) arsenic. It's fascinating to me to imagine a time when forensics and all of the complicated testing techniques we have now didn't exist. It kind of makes you wonder how many innocent people were convicted (and hanged) based on faulty science. If I learned anything, however, it's that arsenic poisoning is not a pretty way to go, and to never, ever trust your servants.