On The Nightstand 1/9/17

Read two YA books last night.  With the Kidlette 2 going on 13, I have to keep up with what the cool kids are reading.

  Drama by Raina Telgemeier; with color by Gurihiru
Absent by Katie Williams
Drama—Brought pack memories of being on the stage crew my senior year in high school.  Kinda bummed that the musical (Moon Over Mississippi) in the story isn't real.  Not too many (read none) Civil War plays these days.  And with a cannon!  Some controversy over a gay character or two, but seriously, it is musical theater—as Nathan Lane once said, "You do the math."  Will be looking for her first one (Smile) and her latest one (Sisters).

Absent—Perhaps a tad too dark and poignant given personal family history, but intriguing enough to seek out her first effort (The Space Between Trees) as well.

Cow Chow Comment

My 2¢ worth of commentary on D. Chadwick's post over at Shorpy

On The Nightstand 1/7/17

Just finished:


The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo
by Juan Reinaldo Sanchez with Axel Gylden.

Fire Engine Flambé

My latest comment over on Shorpy about the "Aftermath of the April 18, 1906, San Francisco earthquake and fire" can be found here.

I Can Get Away With a Lot, But Not This

Original caption:

1966 – Vintage Car In The Gidding’s Drawing Room: For three months Mrs. Christine Giddings has had the bits and pieces of a vintage motor car cluttering up her best drawing room.  Her car enthusiast husband, Peter, is assembling a car in which he hopes to race, and the only suitable place he had to be it as drawing room.  Scheduled to be finished in April, the car will have to be taken down again to get it out of the Giddings Old Portslade, Sussex, home.  The chassis is built from vintage Frazer–Nash parts and the engine is pure Atlanta–Gough [sic]*.  When It’s finished, the car will have cost Mr. Giddings over £250—not counting the hours of labour he has put into it himself—but he hopes that it will do a maximum speed of 120 mph when it’s on the road.  Christine gets on with her knitting in an arm–chair in the drawing room—while Peter gets on with the car.

*Atalanta–Gough

From Peter Giddings Racing:

In 1959 Peter began his racing adventures in a 1928 Frazer Nash.  This car cost around U.S. $500, and gave a great account of itself at circuits and hillclimbs such as Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Goodwood, Crystal Palace, Oulton Park, Firle, Bodiam, and Wiscombe.  The Frazer Nash developed 115 bhp, weighed 1100 pounds, had no differential, and provided neck snapping performance.  It was driven to events in all kinds of weather, as the Frazer Nash was his only form of transportation at that time.

Helluva of a Houseboat

The SMS Kaiser was refloated on March 20, 1929 by the Cox & Danks company after they purchased the battleship, which had been scuttled by her German crew on June, 21 1919 at Scapa Flow.  It was towed to Rosyth for scrapping.

On The Nightstand

Busy, busy, busy.  New Kidlette, new grandson, new house, new scooter.  And lots and lots of new books and magazines.  Cut me some slack.

Here's what I've been reading since early November:

    Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt by Arthur T. Vanderbilt II
Tom Clancy Duty and Honor by Grant Blackwood
Door to Door: The Magnificent Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation by Edward Humes*
    Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson*
Method 15/33 by Shannon Kirk**
The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes
by Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone, and Jeffrey E. Stern
    Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money, and Murder in New York's Chinatown by Scott D. Seligman
The White Ghost by James R. Benn
The Wrong Side Of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
    The Lost German Slave Girl: The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans
by John Bailey
Officially Dead: The Story of Commander C. D. Smith by Quentin Reynolds
Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood
*Recommended by Joe Sherlock.  His book reviews for 2016 can be found here.

Other books recommended by him that I've read this year are:

Car Crazy: The Battle for Supremacy between Ford and Olds and the Dawn of the Automobile Age by G. Wayne Miller (a copy of which was gifted to me by Jesse—Thanks again!).

Car Wars: The Rise, the Fall, and the Resurgence of the Electric Car by John J. Fialka.

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris (actually reviewed in 2015, but I didn't get around to reading it until this year).

Also on his recommendation I purchased:

Prestige, Status and Works of Art: Selling The Luxury Car 1888-1942 by Thomas Solley.

The Man Who Saved The V-8 by Chase Morsey, Jr. (bought from Autobooks-Aerobooks).

**She's not crazy.  Her mother had her tested.