Book Report: Three of Four More

I’ve read four more books.  I’m going to write about three of them right now and one more afterward, because it makes sense to me.

In my continuing quest to get through the humongous pile of nonfiction I have accumulated, I finished Peter Boag’s book Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past.  Boag traces the history of cross-dressing in the “Old West.”  More interestingly, he traces the concerted efforts to fit transgender and cross-dressing people into a narrative that the larger culture found palatable.  There are some true pioneers of every sort in his book and I am glad to have had his flexible and often humorous prose as a guide to the territory.

The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss jumped out at me in a bookstore and demanded that I bring it home.  I am so glad I did.  It’s a quest, it has bikes, it has hilarious monks and nuns, a ghost, and fried pies.  I laughed out loud enough that it would have been embarrassing except that I was at home and the other denizens are used to this behavior on my part.  I would give this book as a gift to pretty much everyone I know who has a soul and it might restore the souls of any who don’t.  It’s that good.  Go read it now.

I have read the entire Lord of the Rings out loud twice because I have two children and I love them both.  For the most part, I have avoided the Tolkien stuff not published during his lifetime.  I slogged through The Silmarillion as a kid thinking I was not smart enough to get it, only realizing later that it was actually just a difficult collection of unfinished texts (because I read it again.  I don’t learn…).  However, the library book sale offered me a hardbound copy of Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales.  I think that Christopher Tolkien improved over time as an editor and writer because it was a much smoother read.  I don’t normally go in for fiction with footnotes (except Nicholson Baker—he writes the best footnotes ever.), but I actually enjoyed the deep dive into how constructing worlds can work.

Next post:  one more book