What am I reading?

At the moment, one of my reading interests is presidential biographies. Peter planted the seed for this effort—he embarked on the project at one point, but it is a lot to chew and it has been on the back burner for a while, and Philip inadvertently supported it. We did a couple of presidential biographies in one of my book clubs over a several year period. (John Adams by David McCullough and Destiny of the Republic (James Garfield) by Candice Millard). Philip gave Paul The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin two Christmas ago and American Ulysses by Ronald C. White this year. The Bully Pulpit is a summary of Theodor Roosevelt and William H. Taft, their differences, friendship and competition; and if you couldn’t guess American Ulysses is a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. So I have jumped around quite a bit in my presidential biography reading. But I have decided that I need to move through the presidents chronologically in future, since the national narrative will make more sense as I see the events unfolding under multiple administrations. I have also gotten about halfway through Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (who, interestingly also wrote Alexander Hamilton (which I have read), the book that Lin-Manuel Miranda used to write Hamilton. –Incidentally, I as I was trying to pick out presidential biographies that I would enjoy, I came across a blog of a man who has undertaken to read multiple presidential biographies and reviews them. He reads a lot of the major biographies and some of the lesser known ones as well. He reviews them on his blog and gives his assessment as to the best. I have used his blog to select the biographies that I choose. Even if you don’t plan to undertake his project, his blog is a rather interesting read. (https://bestpresidentialbios.com/ He started reading biographies in 2010 and is up to Eisenhower at the moment.) Another interest at the moment is Newberry Winner books. I caught up with the Newberrys when we first got back from Europe but I haven’t kept up very well since the early 2000’s. They just announced the 2017—so it has been on my mind. They tend to be shorter and I am going to start sprinkling them in among the presidential biographies. Another source of potential reading material comes from a blog that I glance at from time to time—I wouldn’t say I follow it. Modern Mrs. Darcy. I find her a bit over the top, but she has done a reading challenge for a couple of years. This year she came up with two lists: A reading challenge for fun and a reading challenge for growth. They are found here—she doesn’t provide for cutting and pasting from her blog, or I would have done that. http://modernmrsdarcy.com/reading-challenge-2017/ I think that I could pick some of the biographies and Newberry winners and then fill some of the spots in the reading challenges. We’ll see how this year goes.