22 posts tagged “what i read last month”
This month I gave up on a lot of books I started, and only finished these:
Among the 14 books (!) I read this month, I had a good number of favorites: The Condition, No One You Know, The Help, The Rose of Sebastopol and The Last Bachelor. I found Kristin Chenoweth's book quite enjoyable, but I wish it had more details in parts.
Well, April was another month where I had some stops and starts. I started reading these two and gave up on them:
I finished 14 books this month! That could be the most I've read in one month . . . I'm not absolutely sure. It's certainly the most books I've read in one month since I started keeping track of my reading on Vox.
Favorites of the month: The Oracle Glass, Enchanting Pleasures, Dogs & Goddesses, The Abstinence Teacher
I'm including The Far Pavilions in this month, even though I haven't completed it yet. I read 282 pages out of 960 during January.
Perhaps tomorrow I'll have time to go through all the books I read this year and choose my faves for 2008. But for today, here's what I read in December:
I included Robinson's Home, but I'm actually still working on that one.
This weekend I finished my month-long journey with the book that is David McCullough's Truman. I checked the book out on September 17 and finished it on the night of October 18th. I had to doublecheck my record from the library, because it seemed like I was reading it for much longer than that!
Because the work encompasses the entire life of Harry Truman (well, it actually starts with his grandparents' arrival in Missouri), it is quite a long read. Although the writing ends at about page 992, with all the notes and bibliographic information, the book comes out to about 1120 pages in all.
When I started the book, I didn't know too much about President Truman. I knew the base facts: that he was from Missouri, that he took over the presidency after FDR died, that he chose to use the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, that he met with Churchill and Stalin after WWII, that he had a wife named Bess and a daughter named Margaret (who was a [not-so-great?] singer). Through the book I learned so much about the man - that he never attended college; his entrance into politics through the Kansas City machine; that he really didn't want to be FDR's VP; that as senator he formed a commission that looked deeply into deals that contractors were making with the government and saved the nation millions of dollars in the process; that he served in World War I; that he had to work really really hard to woo Bess; that he believed in civil rights and affordable health care for all; that he had barely a living stipend after he left the presidency (how inconceivable that seems nowadays), and so much more.
It was fascinating to read this during this historic election season, but also a little sad. With the current relationship between the media and politics, a person with only a high-school diploma who is well-read and wise nevertheless - someone who speaks truth to the people and remains humble - well, such a person would never be elected nowadays. But I can't imagine what our nation would have been like without Truman serving as a President. It seems so strange that one man (and his cabinet) were able to accomplish so much in only seven years.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone fascinated by the world of politics and world history. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did, and I think my sadness at finishing (I cried after reading what people said after his death) was due to both the excellence of McCullough's writing and the unique man that Harry Truman was.
It made me want to take a short trip to Missouri to visit the Truman Library, that's for sure. It's been recommended that I start on Robert Caro's LBJ books next, and I will eventually get to those, but I need about a month's break to suck up some fiction (it's so much faster for me to read).
