book report

It's so demoralizing when the books go straight into boxes instead of on the shelves! Can't wait to have this whole move over with so I can put all my books back out the way they belong.

George Howe Colt, The Big House. This is a memoir of the author's family and their summer house on Cape Cod, and really of the author's love affair with both. Reminded me a lot of my feelings toward my own family and how they were bound up with my love for the house I grew up in. The last few chapters, while the "Big House"'s future hung in the balance, were particularly compelling.

James Hewitt, editor, Eye-Witnesses to Wagon Trains West. This is a woven thread of chapters covering the major events in the history of the wagon trains, with author's narrative and excerpts from diaries, letters, and other contemporary publications forming the tapestry. Frankly, I found it a depressingly slow read, and I have better volumes on almost every chapter. Many of them are the source material for this book. Not a keeper.

Scott Zesch, The Captured. This is a tale of Indian captivity, but truly in-depth. It covers the history of Indian abduction in frontier Texas, and uses a fairly large group of abductees to illustrate the history. One of them was the author's great-uncle, making the book a very personal journey. Very well-written and -researched, very interesting.

Guy de la Bedoyere, Defying Rome. A history of rebellions in Roman Britain, this book started off well, but petered off into a fairly dry work. It may well be that the book just wasn't written for the lay reader, and my own lack of knowledge of Roman Britain was the real problem, but bottom line, it just didn't grab me.

Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation. The author chose a stunningly large topic circle to write about—the history of spices, their uses, origins, and places in society. Amazingly, he managed it rather well. The chapters are densely packed, but the information is interesting and I didn't come away feeling that there were major gaps in the subject area.

Finally, Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan. A very comprehensive history of the Salem witch trials. Well-written, character-focused ... but still left me wondering about the lives and the histories of the people who were hanged. So many of them (anyone who didn't get a speaking role in The Crucible) are just faceless names on a list of "the victims." At any rate, this gap aside, A Delusion of Satan was definitely a good read.