Over the long holiday weekend, I finally had the time, leisure, and will to finish reading Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. When I started the book, in April, I thought that it was well written and engaging, relating interesting stories about the 26th president that I had either not known, or not remembered from high school history class. But by the end of the 500-odd pages of prose, I was struggling to finish, and came to the conclusion that the text was several hundred pages too long. If I hadn't realized, about 2 weeks ago, that the last two hundred pages of the volume were end notes, I might have finally given up, and given the book back to its owner without finishing. That says a lot, as I normally hate to leave something unfinished. (Other books that I have found difficult or uninspiring after a while just end up back on my shelf, put aside for a later date.)
After that tome that Teddy himself might have enjoyed, just as, by all accounts, he enjoyed a chewing through a thick slab of meat at the dinner table, I opted for these 450 pages of cotton candy, which I finished in less than 24 hours. An entertaining yarn, if you know about the dragons of Pern, but confusing, and not worth figuring out, as AD tells me, for the uninitiated. Nonetheless, for me, Dragons Blood by Todd McCaffrey was just the perfect antidote to give my mind a break before continuing through my reading list.
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My husband's former postdoc advisor gave him The River of Doubt as a going away gift and he is enjoying it. Not as much because of Teddy, though, but because it's set in Brazil and also follows one of our country's greatest explorer's Rondon (who went with Roosevelt in the expedition up the river of Doubt in the Amazon). I have been able to finish very few books since I started writing the dissertation :(
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