Thursday, February 02, 2006
Oprah's Got Nothin' on Us
Yesterday, I finished reading Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk. I picked it up in part to complete a presentation I gave on Lincoln's image to a Civil War symposium last weekend (didn't know I was such a scholar, did ya?), but also because I've enjoyed Shenk's work in Harper's. Last night I moved on to Highway 61 Revisited: The Tangled Roots of American Jazz, Blues, Rock, and Country Music by Gene Santoro. One of my favorite subjects involves exploring the ways in which these four often-disparate genres have inspired one another in the last 100 years, and Santoro proposes to find some new connections.
So: In those two titles, you've pretty much got the picture of the sort of thing I like to read. Click "Comments" and tell the class what you're reading right now, and why. Think of it as the Oprah Book Club for people who weren't likely to read James Frey anyhow.
How's that for a novel way to get me out of substantive blogging today?
Yesterday, I finished reading Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk. I picked it up in part to complete a presentation I gave on Lincoln's image to a Civil War symposium last weekend (didn't know I was such a scholar, did ya?), but also because I've enjoyed Shenk's work in Harper's. Last night I moved on to Highway 61 Revisited: The Tangled Roots of American Jazz, Blues, Rock, and Country Music by Gene Santoro. One of my favorite subjects involves exploring the ways in which these four often-disparate genres have inspired one another in the last 100 years, and Santoro proposes to find some new connections.
So: In those two titles, you've pretty much got the picture of the sort of thing I like to read. Click "Comments" and tell the class what you're reading right now, and why. Think of it as the Oprah Book Club for people who weren't likely to read James Frey anyhow.
How's that for a novel way to get me out of substantive blogging today?
