Summer Begins and so does my summer reading list

Just finished reading an interesting Project Gutenberg Edith Wharton story from the Atlantic, The Bunner Sisters. Harrowing tale of spinster poverty in late 19th Century lower Manhattan.

As usual, alternating fiction and non-fiction:

I have begun James Gleick's THE INFORMATION: A HISTORY, A THEORY, A FLOOD hoping to refresh my "geek" credentials. I had just reached the page introducing Alan Turing and at the same time (while pausing to read Google News), I saw that the UK Museum dedicated to breaking the Nazi Enigma Code has just rebuilt a "Turing Machine," the computer that helped win the war.

For someone who has trouble with crosswords and math and can't decipher simple substitution codes, I am addicted to books about codebreaking. I like reading about people who do what I can't, like mountain climbing.  Can't wait to visit the Bletchly Park Museum when I get to go back to England.

Also beginning CALEB'S CROSSING by Geraldine Brooks, about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard in 1665. Six miles from my house in Northwestern Connecticut, in the early 19th Century there was a missionary school for young men from Hawaii and other Native Americans. It was disbanded in 1826 when a local (white) woman married a Cherokee graduate, and the mixed-marriage upset the town. Marriage Equality and Affirmative Action have always been prickly subjects

Have a Happy Memorial Day!  I am off to Seattle to see my niece graduate from High School (and then head to Penn as an engineer-to-be) and to congratulate my nephew on finishing college (UC Berkeley) and getting a job as the first software engineer in our family's youngest generation -- which also includes our first Turkish and Arab speaking journalist (an American University graduate who is off to the Middle East as a State Dept. Language Fellow).  These young people give me infinite hope for a future with fewer and fewer wreaths to be laid at fresh graves on Memorial Day.

Watch this space....

Ask you local library about ebook loans. An easy way to keep a reading "budget" while playing with your new Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony or Kobo reader.


From Library Journal reporting on BEA -- annual Book Industry Convention


Growth in demand just beginning
All four panelists described an exponential upward demand for ebooks. For example, Michael Colford, the Boston Public Library's director of resource services and information technology, said he expects the library's ebook budget to triple next year (FY12) from its current total of $105,000 (about 5 percent of the library's materials budget).