Currently reading

Monday
Another Christmas present, and my current reading material. I so enjoy Bill Bryson's books - I guess partly because of our similar, though opposite situations - he's an American living in England, I'm English, living in the U.S. 'Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.' One day, while sitting in his Victorian rectory home, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in his comfortable abode. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

One year ago: Chief Little Turtle and the Cincinnati skyline