E-Books

On my Kindle, I have a folder labeled "Current". The books in that folder are the books that I read on my bus rides to and from work; I read a section of one, then shift to the next, and when I finish a book I remove it from the folder and replace it with another.

Those bus rides aren't happening now, of course. For the time being, then, I've put dead-tree volumes on hold, and I'm reading only from the Kindle.

Currently, the setup is for nine books: three non-fiction, three genre fiction, and three non-genre fiction. Currently loaded:

Non-fiction: _The Life and Letters of Louis Agassiz_; Pliny the Elder's _Natural History_; Richard White, _The Republic for Which It Stands_. The first two are from Project Gutenberg. I remember reading about Agassiz when I was a kid, so I grabbed the Life and Letters when I saw it on PG. White's book is a fascinating history of the U.S. during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, tying together seemingly disparate threads (connecting, e.g., Little Big Horn and the destruction of the Pennsylvania coal miners' union).

Genre fiction: A collection of Russian folk-tales, Mary Renault's _The Persian Boy_, and (a reread) John Scalzi's _Redshirts_. The first is another freebie; I'm not sure whether I got it from PG or elsewhere. The OCR is dreadful, but the stories are amusing if predictable. I'm not quite comfortable with classing the Renault as genre, but the first book of the trilogy included Alexander's childhood visions of Heracles and other gods, so I'm hanging it there.

Non-genre fiction: Michener's _Centennial_; George McCutcheon's _Brewster's Millions_; George Eliot, _Daniel Deronda_. The first is a decades-later reread, and parts of it cross over with _The Republic for Which It Stands_. The second is a fluffy turn-of-the-century novel about a man who, having inherited a million dollars (in 1902, mind) has a shot at another seven-million dollar inheritance, provided that he squanders the original million. (He doesn't seem to know the proverb about birds, hands, and bushes.) I got the Eliot from PG, again; I haven't read anything of hers that I haven't enjoyed.

I am not close to finishing any of these, but by focusing on them I should make some headway this month.

500-year-old Advice

"It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have.

He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over. Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.

No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate the house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city."

- Martin Luther, "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague"

(h/t The Slacktivist)

Deliverance 2

This time, shipt came through; the only deviations were the brand of milk and the amount of orange juice (1/2 gallon as opposed to a full gallon). It also included two boxes of cereal, a bag of the special treats I only give the dogs once a day, and some potato bread.

I still hope the InstaCart strike is settled fairly and soon.