Books I've Read This Week, Vol. I, Issue 7

Hi and welcome back to Books I've Read This Week. Last week I reported on books by Philippa Gregory, James Patterson and Laura Wittig. This week's reading was mostly dedicated to perusing guidebooks on Britain with one exception, Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology.

I was introduced to Simon Winchester through an hour-long special on my local PBS station. Seeking 1906 followed Simon during research for his new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. The 100th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco quake was this month. I found him delightful and intelligent and I wanted to see what his books might be like.

I reserved a few and The Map That Changed the World was the first one that came in. It is the story of William Smith, the son of an Oxfordshire blacksmith, who was fascinated with what lay below the surface of the land. He worked as a surveyor, canal builder and drainage engineer all the while collecting fossils and other data which he used to create a huge map of the hidden layers of the earth in Britain. He was the first to realize that various strata could be identified by the fossils contained within. Society was not good to him though. Being low-born he was not invited into the Geological Society in London, people he thought were friends stole his work and published a rival map based on his own work and he even found himself in debtor's prison. Eventually he was given his due honor and he died a well-respected "Father of Geology" with his map currently displayed in London at the home of the Geological Society.

I do love sciency kinds of books and I found this one very interesting not only for the story of the underdog William Smith, but for the descriptions of the very early thoughts on the age of the earth and how it was influenced by the religious beliefs of the times.

I've just started Simon's The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. I enjoy reading about the history of the English language and this book includes that, along with the personalities who created the OED.

The Britain guidebooks I read this past week are: Rick Steves' London 2003, AAA Britain Travelbook (2001), Lonely Planet's England (2003) and England for Dummies (2006). I have seen several of Rick's TV shows but never read any of his books. He's rather nerdy on TV but the London guidebook is great. I'm definitely going to be purchasing his current Great Britain guidebook. I'm working on making lists of things I want to see and do in each of the stops in our circle tour. And I'm gathering ideas of where we might want to stay. I'm less interested in food recommendations. That I'll save for closer to the day.

I finally made it to the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster in The Intelligent Traveller's Guide to Historic Britain. I've been reading this book so sporadically that last night I decided I had to make a list of the rulers of England and their relationship to the previous monarch so I could figure out what was going on when I picked up the book again. Luckily the author has provided a geneological chart for the Yorkists and Lancastrians so I don't have to do that myself. It's pretty confusing.

Unread books on my shelf at home:
Here Be Dragons, Sharon Kay Penman
The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age, Christopher Hibbert
Sarum: The Novel of England, Edward Rutherford
Memory in Death, JD Robb

Books on hold at the library:
Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, Linda Berdoll
The Virgin's Lover, Philippa Gregory
Virgin Earth, Philippa Gregory
Micah, Laurell K. Hamilton
Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too, Nancy Martin
The 5th Horseman, James Patterson
A Crack in the Edge of the World, Simon Winchester
Promise Me, Harlan Coben
Their Noble Lordships, Simon Winchester
Bleeding Hearts, Susan Wittig Albert

I'll let you which of these books I've read next time on Books I've Read This Week.