Unfortunately I'm so far struggling to get into a happy rhythm of reading my book about dirt. As my wife said, "Reading about dirt not interesting, who would have guessed?" I'm glad I started this process of choosing a book early as I would have been disappointed if I had taken this one with me on my trip to western New York. I still think this could have been a good topic of interest, I just wish this one by William Bryant Logan was more in depth in its approach. Instead of a real thorough scientific and historical exploration of dirt it is instead a series of short chapters usually no longer than three pages each. This is hindering my effort to enjoy the book as there seems to be no flow or rhythm established in the writing. Nor even can I discern any real system of organization with regards to the chapters either as they seem not to relate to each other or follow from one to the next. I'm not going to say that I'll never pick up this one again, but it will certainly be some time before I'm ready to give it another shot.
And so that means I need to pick out another book to start reading. Here then are the ones I am considering:
Longitude by David Sobel
The Book of Contemplation by Usama ibn Munqidh
A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich
The Last Pagan by Adrian Murdoch
I plan over the next couple of days to read a little of each of these and see which grabs my attention the most. Also there's still the possibility that some of my Amazon books will arrive in time in which case I may need to expand the field of contenders... in that order after all is a book called Nero's Killing Machine which sounds plenty exciting to me!
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