Today’s TTT is books on our spring TBR. As is my custom, I’m going to look back at my previous quarterly TBR to see how I did. I batted .500, which is great by my standards: I read five of the listed titles. Two of the remainder turned out to be monstrously big, and two of them suffered from my subject obsession (the road to Civil War in 1850s America) finally burning itself out.

Teaser Tuesday

“At a focus group in Sunnyvale, California, one participant grew antagonistic when showed a device announcing e-mails with a buzzing noise. ‘If this thing buzzes every time I get an e-mail, you’d better ship it with a hammer,’ he warned. LOSING THE SIGNAL

So, Spring TBR!

(1) Paradise Lost, John Milton. I am currently a third of the way through this, and sometimes distracting myself by listening to the BBC adaptation which has Ian McDiarmid as Satan. Imagine, if you will, Palpatine growling “All is not Lost — the Unconquerable Will, the study of revenge, immortal hate!“. It’s chilling. I’m enjoying Milton’s writing — “Devils to adore for Deities” is a phrase that has stuck with me all week.

(2) Losing the Signal, a history of the rise and fall of BlackBerry. I’ve had this for a few years, but recently watching a very loose film adaptation of it prompted me to finally begin reading it.

(3) I need to circle back and finish a book Cory Doctorow wrote on why the internet has become progressively worse over the last decade or so.

(4) Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. April means English Literature month here at RF, and I need to address the two EL titles on my Classics Club list. Mansfield Park is on there, as well…..I keep eying its girth and walking away glum.

(5) Backstage at the Ford Theater, an interesting history that focuses on the actors and stagehands who were present when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. I was making serious progress on this one before getting interrupted.

(6) Black Baseball in Alabama. A new release I’ve not gotten to read yet, despite trying to help the author when he was doing local research. (Turns out a Selma son played for a Harvard team and was nearly recruited by a Boston pro club: in an alternate universe, perhaps people know the name William Clarence Matthews as readily as they know Jackie Robinson in ours.)

(7) GIRLS: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything, Freya India. One of my favorite substack authors, Freya India of GIRLS, writes on the digital world and the female Gen-Z experience.

(8) Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America, Walter Borneman

(9) When the Earth Had Two Moons. It’s closing on the end of March, I really need to get moving on my science reading for this year. O_O

(10) Something by Annie Jacobsen. She’s written books on nuclear war, the CIA, Area 51, and other topics that, if you brought them up at a dinner party, you would be received with a ‘Oh, would you mind if I stepped to the bathroom for a minute’ and then promptly ghosted.