Thursday, October 02, 2014

It's me again

After that Benjamin Franklin business and a cross-state move, I  didn't put anything up.  I felt like I wasn't reading anything, although looking at the list, it's quite long.  But I was only reading one thing at a time, and there weren't too many things I super-loved.


Last week, I realized I was again reding three books simultaneously.  It was, it may sound silly for other people, a really important realization for me.

I am now reading 6 books, all very different from each other-- maybe going a little overboard after my extended slump, true.

Also, the longer I went without posting anything, the more guilty about it I felt.  I had to remember that, as wonderful as any theoretical readers are, this blog is for me.  I started it for me and I maintained it for years with no followers.  These notes are mine, and if it stops being fun, a break is right and good.  

How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein.  This sounded really interesting, and it was... to a degree.  It is cool to know some of these things, but more important to understand some of the general elements that affected state shapes.  I didn't read past the I states, other than to jump ahead to some western states.  It was actually the writing that made the book not totally readable-- the facts tend to be repetitive, but the writing was really repetitive.  The author has a few phrases he overused; it probably wouldn't be so notable if you read this book for just a few states of interest.  

I think the book may have made more sense if it was organized  border-to-border instead of alphabetically by state name.

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