David Baron's weblog: June 2003

Monday 2003-06-09

It's rally annoying whn th E ky on my kyboard dosn't work. And 3, ., j, and ← arn't too grat ithr. (E is OK if I hit it hard nough, and somtims vn OK undr normal us.)

Wednesday 2003-06-04

My reading lately has consisted of reading three books at once. First, I'm finishing Twentieth Century. I'm not sure whether I really like it. I've read more interesting history books. This one tries to treat broad trends, and does well, I think. But I sometimes wonder how much to trust it when I notice too many details of history that it just gets wrong.

I've also bought two books since I arrived in California while looking around in bookstores. (The first in a used and new bookstore in Palo Alto, the second on the sale shelf of a bookstore in Mountain View.) The first of these is a book I started last September (borrowing it from Harvard's library)–the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. I already own and read the third volume, which was excellent. The second, which I just started is Theodore Rex.

I'm amused that I can follow Amazon's "Customers who bought this book also bought" links between all three books mentioned in the previous paragraph and the biography of John Adams that I read recently.

Oh, I almost forgot that I also bought and read Flu. I almost forgot, since I read the whole thing the night I bought it.

I should probably use the library more and buy books less. But the local public library in Palo Alto just doesn't seem that good. I've been spoiled by the Harvard library system, and by one of the local libraries where I grew up (which is also an interesting work of architecture).