Over the weekend, I finished At Home: A Short History of Private Life
by Bill Bryson. This is the first of Bryson’s books that I’ve read, but it is written a conversational, jargon-free style that makes an enjoyable read.
Bryson’s goal with At Home was to
consider the ordinary things in life, to notice them for once and treat them as if they were important.
Using his house, a former rectory in Norfolk, as a guide to private life, Bryson takes us through each room, including rooms that most homes no longer have (the scullery, drawing room, and dressing room, for example), to describe just how much life and homes have changed in the last several centuries.
Along the way, there are many familiar figures. Thomas Malthus and Thomas Edison, William Herschel, Charles Darwin and, for the anthropologists in the audience, V. Gordon Childe and Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers. An interesting mix, and I learned things (about Pitt Rivers in particular) that never came up in my undergraduate history of anthropology class.
There were also interesting knitting-related tidbits. For example:
Sheep…were successfully manipulated to become the bundles of unnatural fleeciness we see today. A medieval sheep gave about a pound and a half of wool; re-engineered eighteenth-century sheep gave up to nine pounds.
And what did they do with these extra-fleecy sheep? Use the wool to make flocked wall paper that was attached with toxic glue. What a waste.
If you are curious about anthropology, history, or etymology (ever wondered where limelight, parlor, or room and board come from?), this is the book.
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The second book for November was the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Rushed to print shortly after Jobs passed away, it is an unflinching look at the man behind Apple, describing his genius, his quirks, and his apparent lack of interpersonal skills. While I enjoyed the Isaacson’s biography of Edison more, and think this book could have been improved if the original March 2012 release date had been kept, I feel the author tried to paint an objective portrait of Jobs.
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As the end of 2011 fast approaches, and I’m taking December off from the book club to read holiday books to my kids, here’s a recap for 2011. I read:
Along with the last-minute add-ins:
Fifteen books for 2011. Nowhere near what I used to read, but respectable. And I still have a few on the list to look forward to in 2012. Happy reading!
