Wednesday, October 17, 2012

What I have been reading lately #54

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)-- Mindy Kaling
Mindy Kaling, a writer/actor on The Office and, currently, Fox TV's The Mindy Project, recently wrote a book about her life growing up in Massachusetts, going to college at Dartmouth, and becoming a writer in Hollywood. I enjoyed this book.

Good Ol' Snoopy--  Charles M. Schulz
This book collects a number of early Peanuts cartoons related to Snoopy. A lot of them revolve around Snoopy's unhappiness at being called "Fuzzy Face" by Lucy.

Good-Bye To All That-- Robert Graves
I read, for the second, third, or maybe fourth time, Robert Graves memoir of growing up in England in the final days before World War One and his subsequent service as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers on the western front. Everyone should read this book.

Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness-- Edward Abbey
Sometime in the 1950s, Edward Abbey worked as a ranger at the Arches National Monument; a few years after that, he wrote a book about the experience. In this book Abbey discusses, among other topics--
  • the desert
  • his ideas for reforming the national park system (eliminating roads and cars mostly)
  • a uranium-finding/murder/survival story
  • going on a cattle drive
  • his thoughts about Native Americans (admiration/they need birth control)
  • water (and quicksand)
  • trying to capture a long-ago escaped horse
  • floating down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon one last time before it was dammed
  • almost getting trapped forever in a canyon
  • searching for and finding a dead body
  • climbing Mt. Tukuhnikivats
  • exploring a group of canyons known as the Maze.
Similarly to Good-Bye To All That, everyone should read this book.

"Hockey ought to be sternly forbidden, as it is not only annoying but dangerous." Halifax Morning Sun, quoted in Michael McKinley's Hockey - A People's History