The 2016 Reading Challenge

This comes from the blog Modern Mrs. Darcy. The Reading Challenge asks you to read:

• a book published this year
• a book you can read in a day
• a book you've been meaning to read
• a book recommended by your local librarian or bookseller
• a book you should have read in school
• a book chosen for you by your spouse, partner, sibling, child, or BFF
• a book published before you were born
• a book that was banned at some point
• a book you previously abandoned
• a book you own but have never read
• a book that intimidates you
• a book you've already read at least once

I am off to a good start.  Right now, I'm reading a book one of my daughters gave me for Christmas, from my extensive Amazon wish list.  It's The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History.  Technically, I'm no longer a student, since I've finished my late-in-life collegiate studies, having received my Master of Liberal Arts in Florida Studies from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg just this past May.  However, we are all -- or should be -- lifelong students.  And we historians are constant, inveterate, and total students.  I'm enjoying the book.  It has given me information on aspects of history and historical study of which I was unaware.

I am also working on a book that intimidates me.  It is Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life.  It's a theoretical work, and therefore it makes my head hurt.  But I'm slogging through it.  He speaks of everyday practices of everyday people.  I just wish he had used everyday language in which to do it!  I am getting something out of it, but probably not as much as is there, alas.  Highfalutin' language and theory always make my head hurt.

As to a book published this year, I'll have to hunt for one.  A book I can read in a day?  I may have a few of those on my shelves, but not very many.  Maybe one of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books.  I love those.  They're delightful.

I have a number of books I've been meaning to read, and for that I think I'll choose fiction.  I will read my friend Lisa Peppan's Somewhen Over the Rain Clouds.  Maybe tomorrow when I take my sister-in-law to the library I'll ask for a recommendation from the librarian.  I like mysteries, so I'll see what she may have to say of something in that field.  A book I should have read in school.  H'mm.  Heh.  Do I want my professors to possibly see this?  Well . . . Okay, I'll fess up.  Dr. Charles Clossman, now chair of the Department of History at the University of North Florida, forgive me.  I didn't read Jack Temple Kirby's The Mockingbird's Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South in class.  I will read it this year, as part of the challenge.

I have a lot of books published before I was born, even though I was born a long time ago!  They were printing by that time.  Gutenberg showed me an advance copy of his Bible!  Okay, kidding aside, as a historian, I have a lot of old books.  My college housemate (FSU, 1965-66) Judith West sent me a book she had held onto since childhood.  This book was published in 1892, and she thought that, as a Florida historian, I'd be interested.  Indeed I am.  The book is Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida, by Richard L. Campbell.  It deals mainly with what was called West Florida, of which Pensacola was the capital in Spanish times, while my studies are mainly of East Florida, of which St. Augustine was the capital.  However, I can certainly read it for Judith, and in honor of my mother, as both were raised in Pensacola.

I have rather a fetish for reading banned books.  It is a way to thumb my nose at the prudes and arrogant bluenoses who ban them.  I must have a banned book in my collection; at least one.  I will check the American Library Association's website for their banned books list.  The website discusses banned and "challenged" books.  I'm sure I can find something fascinating on their lists.

A book you previously abandoned.  That is a tough one.  Usually, when I abandon a book, it is because I just cannot proceed any further in it, for a variety of reasons.  These are the books that I may feel so disgusted at that I throw them against the wall.  I have done so in the past because of execrable writing, terrible plotting, and disgusting characters.  I will have to work on that one.

A book you own but have never read.  I have a few of those.  I shall just peruse my bookshelves and pick one.  To be announced.  A book you've already read at least once.  Oh, that could be such a pleasure, for I have books that I have so thoroughly enjoyed I have read them again and again.  Thomas P. F. Hoving's The King of the Confessors is probably number one on that list.  It is a wonderful story, full of intrigue, telling how Hoving tracked down the elusive Bury St. Edmonds Cross.  This artifact was lost for many years.  It is an elaborately carved cross and is stunningly beautiful.  I also immensely enjoyed E. J. Priz's Cosa Nosferatu:  Capone.  Ness.  Cthulhu.  Yes, you read that right.  It was such big fun!  (Note that on the website, accessible from the above link, the second quoted review, the one in red letters, is mine!)

So that is the challenge, and how I plan to meet it.  I'll comment on these books as I finish them, and tick them off the list.

Take up the challenge!  Read some good books!  After all, we have the whole year, right?

The TRQ

TRQ is the abbreviation I and friends of mine use for "to-read queue," the list of books we have waiting to be read.  Since I will be starting graduate school in the fall, I am planning to spend the summer reading at least one, if not two, books per week.  And as I will be concentrating on history, and specifically on Florida history, here is my TRQ for the summer:

Paul E. Hoffman, Florida's Frontiers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).  A graduation gift from friends.  I told them I was going to have fun with this one, because I've had some bones to pick with the author.


Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession: Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, eds. Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Differences in the Renaissance Empires (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).  The "Black Legend" refers to the reputation the Spanish gained for brutality and greed in the conquest of the New World.  This legend arose out of accusations made by Bartolomé de las Casas, whose writings castigated what he saw as maltreatment of aboriginal peoples, and was fueled by Great Britain, as it was to her advantage to 'diss' Spain.

 Marc Bloch.  The Historian's Craft: Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of Those Who Write It (New York: Vintage Books, 1953).  Big title, small book, and the title says it all.

Georg G. Iggers.  Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).

Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, eds. The Houses of Hisory: A Critical Reader in Twentieth Century History and Theory (New York: New York University Press, 1999).

José Rabasa.  Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).

José Rabasa.  Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and te Legacy of Conquest (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

Matthew Restall.  Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

I also plan to indulge in some light reading, some of which I haven't selected yet.  It looks like a formidable list.  It will be good practice!
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Bowing to the Inevitable

Okay, I went and did it.

I bought a Kindle.

A woman, probably in her mid-forties, in my Ancient Near East history class has one.  She was reading on it one day before class, and I asked her how she liked it.  She told me her sister had given it to her for Christmas, and that she was convinced at first that she would not like it, because -- like me -- she has a fondness deep in her heart for the physical book.

She loves it.  She is handicapped, and like me with my increasingly painful arthritis, has a difficult time carrying around loads of books, as we history majors of necessity do.  She said it was eminently readable and easy on the eyes.

She convinced me.

It will arrive either tomorrow or Wednesday, and I've already got a store of books ready for it.  I downloaded the free "Kindle for PC" app, and bought some books, most for 99 cents, some for $7-$9, nothing over $10.  (My own Non Federal Censuses of Florida, 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources is $19.95 on Kindle.)  A few were free, off of Project Gutenberg.

Here is the list of my "starter" books awaiting my Kindle's arrival:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles,

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol (the original unabridged version).

Robert Southey, translator:  The Chronicles of El Cid.  (My other major is Spanish, and I've read part of El Cantar de Mio Cid in Spanish for my class last term.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:  The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt:  Radio Addresses to the American People between 1933 and 1944.  (The book does not say who the compiler was.)

Frederick Jackson Turner:  The Frontier in American History.  A must for any history major, and I shamefacedly admit that I have not read this book before.

William D. Dewhurst:  The History of St. Augustine, Florida . . . which continues on with the ungodly long subtitle common in 1881, when this was published.  It is an astounding and wonderful fact of a century I am otherwise mostly disappointed in, that books which have been accessible only by traveling to a particular library or archive are becoming available for everyone.  It is making historical research a lot easier.

Mercy Otis Warren:  History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution . . . another one with a long rambling subtitle.  Mercy Warren was THE early American woman of letters, and an eyewitness to the whole thing. 

Alfred Thayer Mahan:  The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783.  Another must-read for history majors, and for anyone having connection to the seagoing military services (I was in the Coast Guard).

Theodora Kroeber:  Ishi in Two Worlds.  I had heard about this book from when I was a kid, but never got around to reading it.  The base fact, that an American Indian whose tribe had been obliterated had been living in the mountains of California, and came down ragged, bedraggled, nearly starving, sounds like the stuff of fiction.  Ishi was found cowering in a corner of a rancher's corral.  The rancher called the sheriff, and the sheriff, bless him forever, called anthropologists at the University of California.  Ultimately a sad tale.

Anna H. Leonowens:  Memoirs of a British Governess at the Siamese Court.  This is the original, true account on which Margaret Landon based a novel, Anna and the King of Siam, upon which Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II based one of my favorite Broadway musicals, The King and I.  Richard Rodgers is one of my favorite composers.

Michael Schumacher:  Mighty Fitz:  The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Schumacher dedicated his book not only to the crew of the ship, but also to Gordon Lightfoot.  And if you do not know the connection between the ship and Gordon Lightfoot, go here: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot.


I do have a problem with some of the books prepared for the Kindle:  on some of them, the bibliographic information (found on the backside, or verso, of the title page) is missing.  That needs to be remedied.

I'm looking forward to playing with the gadget, and I have one great use already for the Kindle:  I am taking it with me on my doctor visits.  I will have something to read that I will truly be interested in reading, and a platform to read them on which has not been handled by a bunch of sick people!

Now, go to the YouTube link and listen to Gordon Lightfoot sing about the Edmund Fitzgerald.  It is an awesome song.
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Adventure on the High Seas: the Real Story of the Mutiny

Recently we had Blog Action Day, the theme of which was Clean Water.  I posted about that on my genealogy blog (linked at right).  I have been busy since then with classwork, so I'm late in putting this up.  Though it doesn't relate specifically to the Blog Action Day theme, the theme of water reminded me of a corking good read I experienced more than 10 years ago now.  (Has it really been that long?  Does not seem like it!)

The book in question is Bligh: A True Account of Mutiny Aboard His Majesty's Ship Bounty, by Sam McKinney.  It is a paintakingly-researched and well-documented full account of the mutiny from the perspective of Bligh and of the mutineers.  McKinney factually examines the 'legend' of Bligh the tyrant in the context of the British Navy of the time.  He includes in the appendices an explanation of shipboard rank and dutles and a copy fo the Articles of War. 

Bligh, it turns out, was typical of British Navy ship commanders of the time.  He had certain authority and powers, explained in the appendices to the book, and the crew were obliged to obey him.  He could be a martinet at times, and did have an explosive temper.  He knew what he was doing as a ship's captain, and was loyal and steadfast in his duty to His Majesty's Navy.  He was also a master mariner who accomplished a prodigious feat of leadership and navigation after being put off the Bounty in a crowded small boat with several of his crew.  Others of the crew loyal to Bligh were forced to remain aboard the ship with the mutineers, as there was not room for them in the small boat.  They were later left behind in Tahiti, when Bounty called there for supplies, and took on Tahitian men and women, before embarking on its search for a safely isolated place for the crew to establish themselves.

Fletcher Christian is shown to be not much of a leader, a failure with fatal consequences.  He fostered or at least allowed an atmosphere of racism and bald-faced discrimination against the Tahitian natives that accompanied the mutineers, leading to a bloody and violent beginning to the colony.  The Pitcairn Island colony eventually settled down to daily life and peace, and lasted until it was finally abandoned in the mid-twentieth century.  His failure of leadership and weakness of character also resulted in his own death.

I highly recommend this book for those who love history and love the sea.  The true tale is at least as exciting and engaging as the mythology which has grown up around the Bounty.
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