Some Annotated Reading May 23

This is a very abbreviated account of this week's reading, because Blogger isn't letting me link to everything. I'll try to work that out before next week. In the meantime, here's what I can link to.

Gail has finished reading still another book. This was an experience. I started reading Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht, because I thought it was a mystery. But it's a spy story, and I decided back when I was a teenager that I don't like spy stories. It's also set in Argentina, which is in South America, a continent of which I know as little as it is possible to know. And, finally, it's set during the 60s, which I'm not that fond of reading about. But the book is readable and features political figures I could look up and see actually existed, which I always like. The Falklands--how interesting are those islands?! I found myself getting into Argentina, too. It may become my South American country. There are two more Vera Kelly books. It's possible that I'll read another.

I'm a big reader of digital library books. So I was interested in Digital Reading Soars in Seattle Creating Problems for Local Libraries. The problem is that libraries have to pay a great deal more for ebooks than individuals do.

The Spindle of Necessity by B. Pladek at Strange Horizons was engaging and met a couple of reading goals--read more short story length work (versus flash) and more science fiction.

Nineteenth Century

I read a lot about the nineteenth century, particularly nineteenth century Vermont. Only one of my two favorites of the week will link:

Then Again: On and off the prohibition bandwagon by Mark Bushnell at vtdigger.  Basically, Vermont was dry from 1853 until 1903 when Vermont towns could vote on whether or not to remain dry. By "dry" I mean "no alcohol" sales. The nineteenth century temperance movement is a huge and fascinating subject, not at all the joke it was treated as in popular culture while I was growing up. I have no idea what the reality of life in a dry state was in the eighteen hundreds.