WHAT have you finished reading recently? Um…Bloodlands, from a week ago. (I’m reading, I promise, I’m just reading too many things at once.) I also finished reading And Then You Die of Dysentery, but I don’t know if that counts given that it’s basically a bunch of pixel art memes for aging millennials. Gift from the ladyfriend that was a nice palate-cleanser after Bloodlands.

WHAT are you reading now? Oh, boy. Well, there’s the book about WW2 Lisbon, which is interesting enough but not as unputdownable I’d expect a book full of spies to be; The Ends of the Earth which is about science at the poles; and a galley proof of A Field Guide to Selma Architecture, which I helped in some of the research. I have also been reading What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs, by various authors.

WHAT are you reading next? Hmmm. Well, these just arrived in the mail for the Great Re-Read! (The red book is Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages. )

Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is ….”What to read if you want to understand ____________”. So, let’s say you want to understand why postwar American cities look like asphalt vomit with chunky bits of Dollar Generals and McDonalds boxes mixed in, instead of cities that we’ve been building since the concept of building things near each other struck Grog and Ugg way back when, then there are three books I’d reccommend: James Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere, which is probably the most accessible and funny; Suburban Nation, which is the most useful given its pictures; and Crabgrass Frontier, which gives more historical context.