I’m great in bed

a little more than four years ago i decided that i was going to read a book on or about most every u.s. president. it's been a hard slog, because 1. it's hard to find books for like 1/3 of them & 2. they're mostly boring.

the book that finished it for me was presidents: every question answered by carter smith. which has info on all of them, 1-45. stuff like parents, place of birth, highlights of what happened during their term(s), what states they won in their election(s) & a brief bio of their first lady or "white house hostess" (a niece, sister, or daughter-in-law) if they were unmarried or widowed.
it's a good book to read, if you want an overview of the u.s. presidents & don't want to buy a bunch of books or spend all day on wikipedia.

there were a few from the list i recommend;

the last founding father: james monroe and a nation's call to greatness by harlow giles unger
john quincy adams by harlow giles unger
abraham lincoln: a life by thomas keneally
truman by david mccullough

for a while now i've wanted to read a book on/about each of the US presidents. i had read a truman biography by david mccullough a few years ago & liked it. but had been not really "into" reading stuff about the rest of the presidents.

however, this year with my booklender (formally booksfree) want to read list getting shorter i decided to give it a go. the problem is that for the more obscure presidents they don't have anything if you just search by name, sometimes it was just a collection of speeches they did, & even with looking stuff up on amazon & then looking to see if they have it, i only have 15 titles so far.

that said, there are 3 US presidents i'm not interested in reading about (the best president ever reagan, bush sr. & jr.) so that is 3 less i have to look for.

i have the first one (about washington) on the to-be-shipped list but it's a "rare book" so it might be awhile before i get it.

and it might take me longer that a year to do this.

an asterisk means that i recommend it.


( presidental books by number )

i decided to keep track of the books that i read this year, just to see how many i read. here are the stats.


( books by the numbers )

most of the books in the first north americans series have similar plot devices; there's a tyrant (or two) who wants to be king over all they see. he often abuses Power (sort of an universal life force similar to The Force) & throws it out of wack. there's one that stands against him, usually male & a Dreamer (someone in tune with Power), who then brings everything back into balance.
each book focuses on a different native american culture and are set anywhere from 13,000 B.C.E to 1300 A.D. there's details about what clothing was worn, what food was eaten, what the dwellings looked like & what some of their rituals were. the authors are archeologists, so you can be sure that most of the details are accurate, up to the time the book was written. (other information could've been found later that contradicts something. i don't know) the first chapter of every novel is set in modern times and deals with some form of clash between native american culture (involving archeology) and the modern world.

but this novel is different; it's a murder mystery.


( all sorts of spoilers )

warning! spoilers for all the fleming bond novels & most of the bond movies.

first off; i've only read the fleming bond novels (& a couple of the more recent movie novelizations), i don't know if this makes me a purist, or an elitist snob.


( pushing the post word limit )

you may have heard about this story of a woman who, disguised as a man, rose to the rank of pope in the 800s. then died or was killed after giving birth during a procession to a church in rome. of course the story was suppressed & joan (or john as she was known) was removed from the list of popes.
a bit of background here; it was very crappy to be a woman in this time period (in a lot of them actually) but during this era known by many as the dark ages (some prefer early middle ages) women were treated worse than animals. their husbands or fathers could beat them & rape was considered a minor theft. the belief was that the size of a woman's brain & uterus were directly proportional, the more that a woman learned & the biger her brain got, the smaller her uterus got and then she couldn't have any children. the use of medicines was viewed as witchcraft, especially if administered by women. any knowledge from the greeks was dismissed because it came from "heathens." bathing was almost unheard of, bloodletting was a popular cure & prayer the answer to almost anything. to quote daniel in the episode demons; well, they didn't call them the dark ages because it was dark.
some would argue that there were some bright spots during this time. it's like the night sky, there's some stars & sometime the moon shines, but let's face it, it's dark.

netflix has a documentary called the dark ages, which i recommend

( the long, spoiler filled synopsis & review )

as of today i've read 23 books, all or part of 16 take place in another country.

i'm on season 8 of stargate, with like 12 days to go before hulu takes them down

more than 95% of what i read is fiction, mostly mysteries & sci-fi, the non-fiction included behind the scenes of tv shows & movies as well as biographies. not sure if that includes my textbooks from school. some of those might have been fictitious, or at least somewhat confused. i find that i prefer some mix of fiction in with the fact, historical fiction; the phillipa gregory tutor series & the like. that's what drew me to this novel. there was an actual "biograph girl" florence lawrence who was the first female movie star & one of the first victims of movies star fame as well. when after being away from the movies for a few years, she found parts hard to come by. reduced to being an extra at MGM, she killed herself at the age of 52.
( spoiler-type stuff )