David Hackett Fischer. Albion’s seed: four British folkways in America. A brilliant work of scholarship. Fascinating, persuasive, informative. I borrowed it from the library, but found it so valuable in both overview and detail that I had to have my own copy.
Michael Swanwick. Griffin’s egg. Haven’t started on this one yet. Part of my program to read all of his books.
Michael Swanwick. Cigar box Faust and other miniatures. I like the term miniature so much better than flash. I’m going to use it from now on.
John Dickson Carr. The case of the constant suicides. Doesn’t everybody love a good clockwork plot?
John Dickson Carr. Til death do us part. See above.
Dan Cruickshank. The secret history of Georgian London: how the wages of sin shaped the capital. That is to say, how sex (or more exactly the sex trade) influenced Georgian culture and in particular architecture.
Mark Twain. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Rereading. “Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!”
A. Roger Ekirch. At day’s close: night in times past. We who live in the present (that is, everybody) assume that the past was in most ways mostly similar to the present. It wasn’t. Not even sleeping was the same.
Hugh Ross Williamson. Who was the man in the iron mask? and other historical mysteries. Little nooks and crannies and oddments, the sort of thing that serious historians prefer to ignore.
Iain McCalman. The last alchemist: Count Cagliostro, master of magic in the age of reason. A charismatic fraud, a type that is ever the same, especially now. Only the names have changed.