On Today’s Bookshelf (XVIII)

The past week has been a very busy week. Clients have inundated me with new work that needs to be done on a short schedule, and thus at a higher-than-normal pay rate. More importantly, I have been forced to do something I loathe doing — I’ve had to turn away a fair number of projects.

I thought with the close of the week such “troubles” would end, but that was/is not to be. Two clients have informed me that I should plan on next year being a repeat of this year. Of course, there are no guarantees, but based on their prognosticating efforts, next year will be very busy again for me. (I had to prepare my financial reports for my accountant for the third quarter tax filings and I was pleased to note that business was up a little more than 50% over last year.)

Finally, the weekend came and I thought I could devote some time to preparing an essay for An American Editor. Alas, when I opened my e-mail Saturday morning, I had a request to submit a bid for editing work. The problem was/is that this work would be year-long and would range in size from 20,000 to 200,000 manuscript pages. Accompanying the request to bid were several lengthy documents that detailed the editing requirements. Combine the need to prepare the bids with my desire to enjoy my weekend, and I decided it was time for another On Today’s Bookshelf article.

These are easy substitutes for me because books are added to the list as I acquire them; I do not need to sit with a blank canvas. There will be at least one more On Today’s Bookshelf before the holidays, in case you are looking for ideas of books to buy as gifts — whether for yourself or someone else.

Here are some of the books that I have acquired and added to my to-be-read pile since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post, either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction –

• The Pope’s Daughter by Caroline Murphy
• Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley
• “Non-Germans” under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939-1945 by Diemut Majer
• The Marcel Network: How One French Couple Saved 527 Children from the Holocaust by Fred Coleman
• Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine by Christian Ingrao
• The Dreyfus Affair: The Scandal That Tore France in Two by Piers Paul Read
• The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind — and Changed the History of Free Speech in America by Thomas Healy
• Desperate Sons: Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and the Secret Bands of Radicals Who Led the Colonies to War by Les Standiford
• Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II by Nancy Beck Young
• A Secession Crisis Enigma by Daniel W. Crofts
• The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era by Douglas R. Egerton
• A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy by Helen Rappaport
• The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport
• Daily Life During the French Revolution by James M. Anderson
• The Psychology of Lust Murder: Paraphilia, Sexual Killing, and Serial Homicide by Catherine Purcell and Bruce A. Arrigo
• The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation by Harold Schechter
• The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise D’Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon by Veronica Buckley
• Intelligence in War: The Value–and Limitations–of What the Military Can Learn about the Enemy by John Keegan
• The First World War by John Keegan
• Divine Fury: A History of Genius by Darrin M. McMahon
• Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell
• Sun Tzu at Gettysburg: Ancient Military Wisdom in the Modern World by Bevin Alexander
• The Grand Chorus of Complaint: Authors and the Business Ethics of American Publishing by Michael J. Everton
• Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 by Jefferson Morley
• Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Betrayal: The Intelligence Campaign Against Adolf Hitler by Richard Bassett

Fiction –

• End Game by John Gilstrap
• Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder
• Soldier of God by David Hagberg
• Kingmaker’s Sword by Ann Marston
• American Coven by Amy Cross
• The Veiled Assassin by Q.V. Hunter
• Soul of Fire by Caris McRae
• Close Call: A Liz Carlyle Novel  by Stella Rimington
• Property by Valerie Martin
• Bye Bye Baby by Fiona McIntosh
• Beautiful Death by Fiona McIntosh
• My Real Children by Jo Walton
• Edge of Eternity: Book Three of The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett
• A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher

As usual, most of my acquisitions are nonfiction. What I find is that much of fiction is the same. I do not mean the presentation or the delivery, but the general pattern: boy meets girl (or girl meets boy), love ensues, they live happily ever after (replace this pattern with another appropriate pattern such as scientist stumbles on plot, tells authorities who ignore scientist’s warnings, scientist decides to save world, scientist turns out to be the new James Bond and saves world). Same theme, different characters, but essentially the same storyline. I do not mean to imply that I do not enjoy well-written fiction, because I do. This is just an explanation of why my primary interest runs to nonfiction.

Nonfiction tends to have greater diversity. There is so much of the world, of nature, of science, of history, of language, of philosophy, of many things that I have yet to discover that nonfiction can provide me with both knowledge and entertainment and keep my interest.

I suppose if I had to say what makes nonfiction books unique as a form of entertainment, it is that it always has surprises, it is not formulaic, and it is not predictable except in the sense that we already know the broad outlines (e.g., the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires ceased to exist or that the Great Depression was the bane of the 1930s).

I hope you find that On Today’s Bookshelf essays stimulate your reading interests. Please add your contributions to books by naming books you think colleagues would be interested in reading.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

On Today’s Bookshelf (XVII)

Here is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or acquired or preordered and added to my to-be-read pile since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post) either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction –

• A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life by Arnold Weinstein
• The Borgias and Their Enemies by Christopher Hibbert
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
• American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott
• Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865 by James B. Conroy
• A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by G.J. Meyer
• Stalin’s Genocides by Norman M. Naimark
• Plotting Hitler’s Death by Joachim Fest
• An Artist in Treason by Ando Linklater
• Imperial Spain 1469-1716 by J.H. Elliott
• The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century by Jurgen Osterhammel
• The Road to Black Ned’s Forge by Turk McCleskey
• Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language by Steven Pinker
• The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
• Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig
• Tears in the Darkness by Elizabeth Norman and Michael Norman
• The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham
• Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson
• The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine
• Blood Libel and Its Derivatives: The Scourge of Anti-Semitism by Raphael Israeli
• Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre by Jonathan Israel
• The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
• Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 by Jonathan Israel
• Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752 by Jonathan Israel
• Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 by Jonathan Israel

Fiction –

• The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen
• A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming
• Darkfire by C.J. Sansom
• The Innocent by Ian McEwan
• The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley
• Final Witness by Simon Tolkien
• Red Cell by Mark Henshaw
• Signora Da Vinci by Robin Maxwell
• The Devil’s Elixir by Raymond Khoury
• HHhH by Laurent Binet
• Limits of Power by Elizabeth Moon
• The Street Philosopher by Matthew Plampin
• Beautiful Assassin by Michael White
• The Director: A Novel by David Ignatius
• Eye for an Eye by Ben Coes
• A Journeyman to Grief by Maureen Jennings

As you can see, much of my summer has been spent acquiring (or preordering) and reading nonfiction books.

I am particularly looking forward to reading the last three in the nonfiction list (the trilogy by Jonathan Israel). The books have been favorably commented on several times in the past few months by reviewers in reviews of Israel’s newest book, Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre, which I also purchased. Unfortunately, that book wasn’t so well reviewed and had I read the reviews before purchasing the book, I might have thought twice about buying it. But now that I own it, I will eventually read it and decide for myself.

One of the books on the list that I am currently reading is The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham. Although I have not quite finished reading the book, I can whole-heartedly recommend it. It is a fascinating look at censorship in the United States during and following World War I and how federal and state governments turned over the role of censor to private antivice groups.

Of even greater interest to me is the revelation of how Joyce was perceived by his contemporaries. Ulysses, a book I have never thought much of, was considered by many, including Sylvia Beach, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, to name just a few, to be the greatest written work of all time. And Joyce received patronage to enable him to write. One admirer gave him what would be £1,000,000 today to sustain him as he wrote.

In many ways, Joyce was a tragic figure. Were he writing today, I doubt that he would have had the support he was given then. But it is worth reading how Ulysses was suppressed, was smuggled into the United States, and, ultimately, with the backing of Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House, was found not to be obscene. If you read just one book about books this year, this should be the book.

What are you reading? Do you have any recommendations to share?

Richard Adin, An American Editor

On Today’s Bookshelf (XVI)

It hasn’t been very long since my last On Today’s Bookshelf (XV) was published, just two months. But it seems that I have had the (mis)fortune (depending on one’s perspective) to discover a lot of books that interest me. And so I have been spending money acquiring yet more books for my ever-growing to-be-read pile. Fortunately, many of them are in ebook form, although if I read a nonfiction book in ebook form and find I really enjoy it, I tend to buy a hardcover version for my library. (It would be so much better for me if publishers bundled the ebook with hardcover version for just a few dollars more than the hardcover alone. I’d always buy the bundle.)

I admit that I get a great deal of pleasure from sitting in my library and looking at the hardcovers on the shelves, remembering the books as my eyes slide over the spines. As much as I like the convenience of ebooks, ebooks fail to evoke in me the sensory pleasure (or the memories) that print books bring forth. Scrolling through a list of ebooks just doesn’t provide the same degree of pleasure I get from sitting in my library surrounded by print books.

Books are the armchair way to experience the world in which we live. Few of us have the resources, whether it be financial or time or something else, to spend years traveling our world and participating in discovery. Consequently, we rely on others to do the legwork and to share their experiences and gained knowledge. Books are a guilt-free addiction. Editing fills part of my craving; the rest of my craving is fulfilled by the books I acquire and read. Alas, there isn’t enough time to sate that craving and so I keep on acquiring.

Here is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or have acquired and added to my to-be-read pile in the two months since On Today’s Bookshelf XV was published) either in hardcover or in ebook form. I have already started On Today’s Bookshelf XVII.

Nonfiction –

• Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966 by Michael S. Bryant
• Confronting the Good Death: Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953 by Michael S. Bryant
• Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity by Prue Shaw
• A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War by Isabel V. Hull
• Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle
• Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
• The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
• What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa by David E. Murphy
• Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre
• God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy
• 1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See by Bruce Chadwick
• Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire
• Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister by Robert Hutchinson
• House of Treason: The Rise & Fall of a Tudor Dynasty by Robert Hutchinson
• The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor
• Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII by David Loades
• Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force by John L. Allen
• Vienna 1814 by David King
• The Destructive War by Charles Royster
• The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 by Lisa Tetrault
• The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914-1940 by Frederick Brown
• How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust by Dan McMillan
• Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth and the Wars of Religion by Susan Ronald
• Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics by Terry Golway
• 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
• The Last Alchemist, Iain McCalman

Fiction –

• The Inventor’s Secret by Andrea Cremer
• Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson
• The Dark Citadel Trilogy (3 books): The Dark Citadel, The Free Kingdoms, and The Golden Griffin by Michael Wallace
• The Mapmaker’s Daughter by Laurel Corona
• Paris by Edward Rutherford
• The Legend of Oescienne: The Awakening (Book 3) by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson (I previously bought and read book 1: The Finding and book 2: The Beginning)
• Last Rituals (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir Series #1) by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
• Power Down by Ben Coes
• The Soul Forge by Andrew Lashway
• The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent
• Blood Money by David Ignatius
• Stone Cold by Joel Goldman
• Natchez Burning by Greg Iles
• The Increment by David Ignatius
• In the Hall of the Dragon King by Stephen Lawhead
• Agency Rules by Khalid Muhammed
• The Scavenger’s Daughters by Kay Bratt
• Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign (Books 1 & 2 of the Powder Mage Trilogy) by Brian McClellan
• The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
• Mirror Sight (Book 5 of the Green Rider series) by Kristen Britain
• The Tattered Sword and The Huntsman’s Amulet (Books 1 & 2 of The Society of the Sword series) by Duncan Hamilton
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• The Night Birds by Thomas Maltman

As you can see from the lists, nonfiction and fiction are about equal. Interestingly, for the past 6 or so months, the majority of my reading has been fiction, which should have meant that fiction would greatly outnumber nonfiction. But I know that it won’t be long before I return to nonfiction to the near exclusion of fiction. More importantly, most of the nonfiction I acquire in hardcover, whereas the fiction is largely acquired in ebook format.

A goodly number of the nonfiction books I acquired I discovered from reviews or ads in the New York Review of Books. One of the things I like about the NYRB is that the book reviews almost always not only discuss the book being reviewed, but other books relevant to an understanding of the subject matter. Thus the reviews act as leads for me to acquire other, older books.

Am I the only editor whose TBR pile keeps growing and who cannot stop buying books? What are you reading/stockpiling? I know I ask that question with regularity, but it would be nice if more of you listed books you are buying/reading in the comments — it would expose the rest of us to books and authors we haven’t read.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

On Today’s Bookshelf (XV)

Here is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or acquired and added to my to-be-read pile since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post) either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction –

• Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Shogan
• The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 by Maristella Posttiani & Zvi Eckstein
• Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
• The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election by Zachary Karabell
• The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision by Henry Kamen
• Ghettostad: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City by Gordon J. Horwitz
• Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938-1945 by Doron Rabinovici
• The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997 by Piers Brendan
• The History of the Renaissance World by Susan Wise Bauer
• The Heavens are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod by Avrom Bendavid-Val
• Understanding the Book of Mormon by Grant Hardy
• Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us About Right and Wrong by David Edmonds
• A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination From Persecution to Genocide by Alon Confino
• Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg
• The Internal Enemy: Slavery and the War in Virginia 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor
• Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America by Owen Matthews
• An Idea Whose time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Todd S. Purdum
• The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD by Simon Schama
• The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
• Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists by Jean H. Baker
• The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today by Kevin Bales
• Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin by Neal Bascomb
• Wilson by Scott A. Berg
• Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte by Carol Berkin
• Lucrezia Borgia by Sarah Bradford
• The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
• To Kill Rasputin : The Life and Death of Gregori Rasputin by Andrew Cook
• The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era by Douglas R. Egerton
• The Borgias and Their Enemies: 1431-1519 by Christopher Hibbert
• Voting for Hitler and Stalin: Elections under 20th Century Dictatorships edited by Ralph Jessen & Hedwig Richter
• Social Democratic America by Lane Kenworthy
• Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris by David King
• The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici by Elizabeth Lev
• Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin’s Plot for Global Revolution by Giles Milton
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Fiction –

• Blood Land by R.S. Guthrie
• Cauldron of Ghosts by David Weber & Eric Flint
• Rex Regis by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
• Like a Mighty Army by David Weber
• The One-Eyed Man by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
• Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb
• Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
• One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
• The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson (a 10-book omnibus)
• The Bat by Jo Nesbo
• The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin
• Death Is Not the End by Ian Rankin
• The Ludwig Conspiracy by Oliver Potzsch
• The Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Potzsch
• The Dark Monk by Oliver Potzsch
• Freeman by Leonard Pitts
• The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett
• The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter
• Witch Wraith by Terry Brooks
• Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

I acquired most of the nonfiction books in hardcover and most of the fiction books in ebook.

Alas, I wish I could say that the above list represents all of the books I have added to my library since the last listing, but it doesn’t. I calculated that if I retired today and read four books every week, I would need more than 30 years to read all of the books I have acquired. Fortunately, most of the books are in ebook form (I have acquired more fiction than nonfiction) and I am trying to restrain my purchases.

I have found this to be the primary negative to my being an editor — I never seem to have enough books on hand, always want more, and spend much more than I should on books. On the other hand, editing provides me with a sufficient income to support my book addiction.

I admit that feeding my book addiction was less costly before ebooks. The ease of storage of ebooks encourages me to acquire books for future reading that I wouldn’t acquire if I had to acquire them in print form; in the latter case, I would wait until I had reduced my to-be-read pile significantly.

I also note that once I started acquiring ebooks, I also increased my hardcover acquisitions. My son claims (tongue in cheek) he will be able to have a comfortable retirement just from the sale of my library.

What books have you acquired in recent months that you would recommend being added to the TBR pile?

The Holidays Gift List of Books II

The holiday season is fast arriving. In another week, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Chanukah comes early this year, coinciding with Thanksgiving. And Christmas is a little more than a month away.

The real excitement in my household is spending the holidays with the grandchildren. One grandchild is still too young to really appreciate the season; the other is just getting to the age when she can at least appreciate gifts. But Thanksgiving should be great. Carolyn and I are hosting this year and expect about 20 people, maybe a few more. I’ve decided to be adventurous with the turkey so, I’ll be making it differently than in the past. The one thing I will be sure to do, however, is brine it in Coca-Cola (regular, not diet).

Which brings me to list making. I have to do the one thing I really hate doing at holiday time: make a list of possible gifts for me. I keep saying no gift is needed, just show up and let’s have fun, but that goes over as well as a lead balloon flies. So several years ago I started putting together a list of hardcover books I would like. Last year I published my list on An American Editor in “The Holidays Gift List of Books“; I thought I would do the same this year and see if you have any suggestions for hardcover books that I should add to my list. Here goes:

• The War that Ended the Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan
• Making Freedom by R.J.M. Blackett
• Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation by Estelle B. Freedman
• Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lauer
• Fear Itself: The New Deal & the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson
• The Tie that Bound Us by Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz
• The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History 70-1492 by Maistella Botticin & Zvi Eckstein
• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
• The Strange Career of Porgy & Bess by Ellen Noonan
• Thomas Nast by Fiona Deans Halloran
• FDR and the Jews by Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman
• A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook
• How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore
• The Original Compromise by David Brian Robertson
• Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 by James Oakes
• The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark
• The Creation of Inequality by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
• Remembering Survival by Christopher Browning
• Angel of Vengeance by Ann Siljak

There are some others I am thinking about, but the truth is I already have a large number of books — both fiction and nonfiction — to read. I don’t really need more books to add to my to-be-read pile, especially as I am constantly adding books throughout the year.

If you are looking for a good book to give as a gift, I highly recommend The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer. This is the third book in Bauer’s survey of world history. Her first book, The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, and her second book, The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, are excellent.

Also excellent is the biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the most remarkable woman, I think, of the twentieth century, by Blanche Wiesen Cooke. Only two volumes have been published so far: Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1933: A Life: Mysteries of the Heart and Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933-1938. Both volumes are available in the used book marketplace.

Some other nonfiction books I can recommend are these:

• The Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E. M. Berens
• Wilson by Scott A. Berg
• Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership by Conrad Black
• One Summer by Bill Bryson
•  One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
• The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh
• The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester
• The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 by Chris Wickham

Now it’s time for your suggestions.

On Today’s Bookshelf (XIV)

I spend my working hours editing books and then spend my pleasure hours reading more books rather than watching TV. I can’t recall the last time I turned on the TV (except to watch a rented video). What follows is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or acquired since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post) either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction –

• Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Shogan
• A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman
• The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer (I already own and have read the first 2 volumes in this outstanding history: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome and The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, as noted in prior On Today’s Bookshelf posts)
• The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd
• Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America by Owen Matthews
• The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition by Mark Twain, edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Benjamin Griffin (I already own and have read volume 1)
• Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott
• Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
• Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
• The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner
• Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell
• The Last Tsar by Donald Crawford
• Thomas Becket by John Guy
• Hiding Edith by Kathy Kacer
• The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh
• A Monarchy Transformed by Mark Kishlansky
• The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell
• Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy
• Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson
• The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
• Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
• The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston
• Six Women of Salem by Marilynne Roach
• The Last Greatest Magician in the World by Jim Steinmeyer
• Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Fiction –

• Blood Land by R.S. Guthrie
• Shadowborn by Moira Katson
• Ascendancy by Jennifer Vale
• Witch Wraith by Terry Brooks
• Two Fronts: The War that Came Early by Harry Turtledove
• Treecat Wars by David Weber
• Shadowborn, Shadowforged, & Shadow’s End by Moira Katson (trilogy)
• The Song of Eloh Saga by Megg Jensen (7 books combined in a single omnibus)
• The Dream Thief by Shana Abe
• Something Blue by Emma Jameson
• Venice by Peter Ackroyd
• The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin
• Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins
• The Algebraist by Ian Banks
• Bone Thief by Jefferson Bass
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Bridge of Dreams and Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
• Killing Rain by Barry Eisler
• First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
• American Assassin by Vince Flynn
• Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler
• The Apostates Tale by Margaret Frazer
• Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
• Chosen, Exalted, Stained, and Stolen by Ella James (4 books)
• The Iron Legends by Julie Kagawa
• The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
• Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin
• The Chair by James Rubart
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

As you can see, I have no shortage of reading material. As I have noted before, my to-be-read pile keeps growing at a pace faster than I can read books. Perhaps if I ever retire I will have enough reading time to read faster than I acquire.

What is most interesting to me is not how many books I read but how many I start and never finish. Being an editor has its downsides. For example, I get frustrated by books that wander, or where the same character has 14 names (and counting), or the bad editing sticks out like a beacon, or the author has a lot to say but lacks even minimal storytelling techniques. (Note I have not mentioned those books that frustrate because of poor grammar and English, which is a category unto itself.)

The holiday season is soon upon us and I need to begin to put together a wish list of hardcover books I am interested in. Have you given thought to what books you will ask for this holiday season? How is your to-be-read pile growing/declining?

On Books: Fairness and Freedom

This is really just a quick note to let you know about a new book I bought. The book is Fairness and Freedom — A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States by David Hackett Fischer.

I was in my local Barnes & Noble to buy an antiglare filter for my Nook Tablet and after purchasing it, I decided to browse the new history shelves. (I bought the antiglare filter because I want to use my Tablet outdoors this summer, but unlike eInk screens, the tablet LCD screens washout in sunlight, necessitating some auxiliary help. I could have ordered the filter, but if you buy it in the store, they will put it on for you, which means that practiced hands will do it rather than me.)

Fairness and Freedom caught my eye because of the subject matter: a comparison of the United States and New Zealand. I had just finished Shayne Parkinson’s Daisy’s War (see Worth Noting: Daisy’s War by Shayne Parkinson for a review), which takes place in New Zealand, and I realized that what little I know about New Zealand comes largely from geography classes taken 50 years ago and from Parkinson’s novels. Consequently, this book looked like an excellent introduction to New Zealand. David Hackett Fischer is a well-known historian of American history, with Washington’s Crossing, which I read several years ago, probably being his best known work, having won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for History and being a 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction finalist.

The book is described as follows:

Fairness and Freedom compares the history of two open societies–New Zealand and the United States–with much in common. Both have democratic polities, mixed-enterprise economies, individuated societies, pluralist cultures, and a deep concern for human rights and the rule of law. But all of these elements take different forms, because constellations of value are far apart. The dream of living free is America’s Polaris; fairness and natural justice are New Zealand’s Southern Cross.

Fischer asks why these similar countries went different ways. Both were founded by English-speaking colonists, but at different times and with disparate purposes. They lived in the first and second British Empires, which operated in very different ways. Indians and Maori were important agents of change, but to different ends. On the American frontier and in New Zealand’s Bush, material possibilities and moral choices were not the same. Fischer takes the same comparative approach to parallel processes of nation-building and immigration, women’s rights and racial wrongs, reform causes and conservative responses, war-fighting and peace-making, and global engagement in our own time–with similar results.

I look forward to reading Fairness and Freedom and learning more about New Zealand and America.

On Today’s Bookshelf (X)

My to-be-read pile keeps getting higher and higher. Fortunately, ebooks don’t take up much in the way of physical space or I would be in trouble. I must have a backlog of close to 500 ebooks waiting to be read.

I’m beginning to think that being a booklover is more akin to an illness than to anything else. The ease with which we can accumulate and store ebooks — and that so many of us are unable to resist adding to our ebook collection — should create a new psychological disorder along the lines of hoarding. I’m not sure what to name it, but now is the time to start thinking of names so perhaps I can get bragging rights when the American Psychological Association finally recognizes my named disorder.

Anyway, it’s time to list the new acquisitions. As usual I begin with hardcovers.

Hardcovers —

• 1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory by David Pietrusza
• The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election by Zachary Karabell
• The Annotated Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
• The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon
• Emancipation: How Liberating Europe’s Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance by Michael Goldfarb

eBooks (a partial list of recent acquisitions) —

• Show No Mercy: A Michael Dodge Thriller by Brian Drake
• Mist Warriors by Rebecca Shelley
• The Chicago Druid and the Ugly Princess by Thomas Kennedy
• Hunting the Wolfpack by Michael McQuade
• Starseeker by Stephen Shypitka
• Openers by Michael E. Benson
• Dark Moon Rising by B.K. Reeves
• Dead is Dead by James Gabriel
• Vindicator by Denney Clements
• Untouchable by Scott O’Connor
• The Girl Born of Smoke by Jessica Billings
• Shadow Touch by Erin Kellison
• Ransome’s Honor by Kaye Dacus
• Night Bird’s Reign by Holly Taylor
• Legwork: A Casey Jones Mystery by Katy Munger
• Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
• Birchwood by Robert Taylor
• Deadworld by J.N. Duncan
• The Girl Who Tweaked Two Lions’ Tails by Pierre Van Rooyen
• Mama Does Time by Deborah Sharp
• Deadly Sanctuary by Sylvia Nobel
• Until Proven Guilty by J.A. Nance
• Rys Rising by Tracy Falbe
• The Society of Dirty Hearts by Ben Cheetham

As is usual with the ebooks, the purchase price of nearly all of the ebooks was “free.” With all of the free ebooks that are available, including from traditional publishers, I am beginning to wonder if there is really a future for the larger corporate publishers. I am accumulating so many freebies that I never have to buy a high-priced Agency 6 book to have something to read — even if 85% of the freebies turn out to be not readable at all.

For the big publishing houses, this should be worrisome. Alas, I do not think it even registers with them — if it does, it isn’t reflected in the pricing of Agency 6 ebooks.

On Today’s Bookshelf (VII)

Adding to my TBR (to-be-read) pile seems to be a neverending process. Since the last On Today’s Bookshelf (VI), I have added the following books:

Hardcover —

• The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide by Daniel Blatman
• The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt
• Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
• Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial by Steven Lubet
• William Bouguereau (2 vols.) by Damien Bartoli and Frederick C. Ross
• Blackveil by Kristen Britain

Hardcover — Preorder

• The Language Wars: A History of Proper English by Henry Hitchings
• Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• How Firm a Foundation by David Weber
• The War That Came Early: The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove

eBooks — Nonfiction

• Germs, Genes, & Civilization: How Epidemics Shaped Who We Are Today by David Clark
• A Philosophical Dictionary (6 volumes) by Voltaire
• Secret Holocaust Diaries by Nonna Bannister
• Hitler’s Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway 1940 by Henrik Lunde
• Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case by David E. Stannard

eBooks — Fiction

• In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V edited by David Weber
• Mrs. Quigley’s Kidnapping by Jean Sheldon
• Deadly Withdrawal: An Aggie Underhill Mystery by Michelle Hollstein
• The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick
• Letters from Earth by Mark Twain
• Paid in Blood by Mel Odom
• Warriors of the Cross by T.R. Graves
• Stars Rain Down by Chris Randolph
• Blue by Lou Aronica
• Life Blood by Thomas Hoover
• Syndrome by Thomas Hoover
• You Can’t Stop Me by Max Allan Collins
• Protector (Jane Perry Series #1) by Laurel Dewey
• Medical Error by Richard Mabry
• Sword Lord by Robert Leader
• The Labyrinth by Kenneth McDonald
• Arm of the Stone by Victoria Strauss
• Redcoat by David Crookes
• The Shepherd by Ethan Cross
• The Twentyfirsters by Kekoa Lake
• Rogue Forces by Dale Brown

Of the above listed books, I have read, and thus removed from the TBR pile, The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, Blackveil by Kristen Britain, and Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case by David E. Stannard. All three are excellent; I plan to do a review of Honor Killing as I think it is a particularly worthy book, even though the publisher did a terrible job creating an ebook version (words were dropped and too many sentences begin with “I” when it should be “It” or something else that begins with an “I”).

If you are reading or have read a particularly interesting book that you think others might enjoy, why not add a comment to this article and let us know. It is only by sharing our reading lists that we can broaden our exposure to worthwhile reads among the nearly 1 million books published each year, especially among the self-published/indie books.

On Today’s Bookshelf (V)

As always, I find it difficult to to keep away from books, and my to-be-read (TBR) pile keeps growing. I wonder if I’ll ever really get to read all of these books that I’m buying. I regularly think I should swear off buying any more books until I make a dent in my TBR pile, but every time I mention that idea to my wife, she simply smiles and shakes her head knowingly.

Below are the newest additions to my TBR pile. Past additions can be found in these articles: On Today’s Bookshelf, On Today’s Bookshelf (II), On Today’s Bookshelf (III), and On Today’s Bookshelf (IV).

Hardcover — Nonfiction

• Ancient Americas: The Great Civilisations by Nicholas J. Saunders
• Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946 by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt 
• Shostakovitch: His Life and Music by Brian Morton
• Eleanor Roosevelt 1884-1933, Volume One by Blanche Wiesen Cook
• Eleanor Roosevelt 1933-1938, Volume Two by Blanche Wiesen Cook
• Palestine Betrayed by Efraim Karsh
• The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War by Donald Stoker

 — Fiction

• The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

• Bearers of the Black Staff (Legends of Shannara Series #1) by Terry Brooks

eBooks (all fiction):

• The Book of Deacon by Joseph Lallo
• Slaves to the Empowered by Jeremiah Cain
• The Gateway: Harbinger of Doom by Glenn Thater
• An Old-fashioned Folk Tale by Valmore Daniels
• Eye of the Beholder by Ruth Ann Nordin
• Miss Anna’s Frigate by Jens Kuhn
• The Book of Adam: The Autobiography of the First Human Clone by Robert Hopper
• The Kinshield Legacy by K.C. May

On Order (all hardcover):

— Fiction

• Empress of Eternity by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
• Out of the Dark by David Weber
• Antiphon by Ken Scholes

— Nonfiction

• Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1 by Mark Twain, edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Benjamin Griffin
• Decision Points by George W. Bush

As I expected, my reading of nonfiction has slowed considerably this summer. It is a combination of much too much work and too little free time. It also doesn’t help that when the weather is nice, I like to lie in the hammock and read, something my Sony 505 is perfect for. But that will change. I find that as the weather gets cooler and then colder, I tend to read more and I am determined to get through at least a portion of my TBR pile before the change back to warmer weather in the spring.

It also doesn’t help that time now that I would spend reading I’m spending preparing for my presentation at the upcoming “Finding Your Niche/Expanding Your Horizons” conference (see A Gathering of Freelance Editorial Professionals for some details). If you haven’t already preregistered, you can save some money by doing so before September 1. The conference will be a great place to meet colleagues and to learn new tips and tricks to make your professional life easier and more fruitful.