Today’s TTT is books we couldn’t wait to get and have not read. But first, The Tuesday Tease!

Odysseus openly laughed. ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve never seen such a
rocky, scrubby, barren, unforgiving spot,’ he said. ‘It’s all our farmers can
do to grow weeds there, let alone cereals and fruit. We have the sourest
wine, the raggediest sheep, the scrawniest cattle of any island in the wide
Ionian Sea. Trees and houses are blown down every year in the gales. Some
years, the rain never comes, and the earth turns to sand. Other years, the
whole island slops with mud. Believe me, Ithaca is no Ogygia. But it’s
something else … it’s …’ His eyes now filled with tears and the word came
out hoarsely, ‘… home.’ ODYSSEY, Stephen Fry.

In the last week I’ve listened to a 3-part podcast on the Odyssey by The Rest is History, as well as attached Troy and The Odyssey with Armand Assant.

So, Books I’ve Bought But Not Yet Read….

(1) GIRLS: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, Freya India. The only reason I haven’t devoured this has been the presidential fixation and the fact that this is a book I really need to focus and sit with, unlike presidential biographies which are a lot more casual even when they’re thought-provoking.

(2) Lee in the Shadow of Washington, Richard McCaslin. A study of Robert E. Lee and George Washington, particularly how the life of Washington dominated Lee — both because he was married to a Washington relation, the Custis family, but because for Lee Washington was The Model Gentleman.

(3) Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa. I am reading this one. Slowly, but reading it.

(4) The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865. Ordered this at the start of the year for America @ 250 reading, but then Nixon and Kennedy took over.

(5) The Civil War: An Aerial Portrait. I could knock this out in an hour; it’s just photos of battlefields.

(6) Caesar: Life of a Colossus, Adrian Goldsworthy. I was REALLY in a Roman mood when I bought this. The mood exited stage left, pursued by a Praetorian.

(7) Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. Huh, where did I put this?

(8) One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream. I was reading this two weeks ago, where did I put it? It’s a big book, too, not easy to lose…

(9) Historic Pensacola (Colonial Towns and Cities of the Atlantic World). Hoping to go back to P-Cola in September; maybe I’ll read this then.

(10) The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. I bought this thinking it was kinda like Humans of New York, but it’s mostly pictures. I could knock it out in an hour, I just…haven’t.