Today’s treble T is our summer booklists, which prompts me to first take a look back at my spring list. Boy, did I not do well: to borrow from baseball, I only hit .400. (Actually, in baseball that would be terrific batting average.) Of the spring list, I read Star Trek: Asylum, Real England, Ty Cobb, and “more CJ Box”. Boy, did I read more CJ Box!
Today’s tease:
Biden had cut short his family vacation in Nantucket to plead his case to Obama directly. “Listen to me, boss,” Biden said. “Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.” He leaned in toward Obama and stage-whispered, “Don’t let them jam you.” (Bob Woodward, WAR.)
(1) One of Us: Nixon and the American Dream. I’ve never read a biography of Nixon before, and bought this when I was in a mood. Unfortunately, it happened to be the victim of flying coffee violence while in my car, but I think my physical copy is still readable.
(2) Chernobyl’s Wild Kingdom: Life Inside the Dead Zone. A look at how nature has responded and changed to the absence of human and presence of radioactive activity around Chernobyl.
(3) War, Bob Woodward. A history of the Biden presidency’s attempts to manage DC’s response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, and mideast bloodbaths from the Afghan pullout to the Hamas obscenity and the resulting invasion of Gaza. This one is in progress, and will be my second Woodward: I know I read Fear in October 2018 but it doesn’t appear on the blog, not even in a short-round. I’m 70% of the way through this one, so it’s a bit of a lock-in.
(4) Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, Trita Parsi. I’ve owned this on Kindle for a while but have yet to read it: given that a hot war has broken out, it seems time to finally take it on. I’ve read Parsi before, in Losing an Enemy.
(5) Star Trek Strange New Worlds: Toward the Light, James Swallow. Another Strange New Worlds title to keep me from withdrawal until season 3 begins airing in July….
(6) Back of Beyond, CJ Box. He has a smaller non-Pickett series that I might look into.
(7) Content, Cory Doctorow. A collection of essays on copyright, intellectual property, etc. This is a pet topic of Doctorow’s, one he has explored in both essays and fiction.
(8) The House Divided. This is just one to finish: it’s about the origins of the first Congressional baseball game.
(9) The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, Richard Dawkins. I’m looking forward to this one because the premise sounds a bit like Ghosts of Evolution: he’s looking at the way various creatures’ phenotypes testify to the environment that molded them, even when they’ve been displaced from that environment by ecological changes and so on. (Ghosts remains one of my favorite science books, ever, examining broken ecological relationships — like trees that produce food for giant ground sloths who are no longer there to eat them.)
(10) The British are Coming — maybe ? I usually do an American revolution nod in late June or early July, but it’s a big ol’ book.
Reading Freely 
Content looks like a good read.
Here is our <a href=”https://www.longandshortreviews.com/miscellaneous-musings/top-ten-tuesday-books-on-my-summer-2025-to-read-list/“>Top Ten Tuesday.</a>
I’ve enjoyed the little bit I’ve read of it already. My comment at your place is in moderation purgatory at the moment. 😉
That Chernobyl book and The Genetic Book of the Dead both look good!
Thanks for stopping by earlier.
My pleasure!
These sound interested! The Arundel Chronicles are amazing revolutionary war reading if you haven’t yet. Arnold before his defection in Rabble in Arms is some extremely solid writing about the area I grew up in lol
I hadn’t heard of those! Thank you.
I keep waiting for the Strange New Words books to come to my library. Maybe I just need to go ahead and buy them!
Does your library have a ST collection? Mine did in the 1990s and 2000s when ST was everywhere, but there’s no demand for it now. Most of my Trek reading is kindle discounts or used paperbacks.
Serious-sounding stuff for light summer reading. Ha! Hope you enjoy your choices.
My TTT Summer Reading List
I find the scientific information and images coming from Chernobyl to be so fascinating.
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
https://readbakecreate.com/summer-2025-tbr-ten-books-i-hope-to-read/
CHERNOBYL’S WILD KINGDOM sounds really interesting! I hope you enjoy all these.
Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
My brother is quite a fan of the Nixon interviews on YouTube, might be a good companion piece to the biography if you haven’t checked them out yet 🙂
Would be that be the Frost/Nixon ones?
I just checked with him, it’s Frank Gannon. I’m not sure if WordPress will let me share a link, but look up Nixon-Gannon Interviews, from UGA
Thanks! There’s a Nixon channel that I’ve a few on. He is oddly compelling. Any idea what stirred your brother’s interest?
Not sure! He loves history, though, and old interviews
Kindred spirit. He’s probably aware of it, but the channel called Richard Nixon Foundation has some good clips.