Rebecca Reads

One Saturday, my husband laughed out loud while listening to something on his headphones.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
” ‘Maggots’ is an ugly word; she’s using ‘haciendas’ instead!”
My husband doesn’t normally laugh out loud while listening to audiobooks. This was new. After a bit more coaxing, I found that he was listening to Stiff by Mary [...]

In The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester delves into two contrasting yet similar personalities who helped to create the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). One is the professor, Dr. James Murray, a prolific scholar who undertakes the daunting task of creating a comprehensive dictionary; the other is a madman, Dr. William C. Minor, a schizophrenic [...]

Weekly Geeks this week is about Challenges.
I have been hesitant to sign up for challenges because I’m a perfectionist. While I know there are no “challenge police” coming to check that I’ve finished my reading, I can’t bring myself to say “I’ll read these books” if I don’t think I’m going to have time. (And [...]

Katharine Graham was most well-known to me for being publisher of The Washington Post during the newspaper’s reporting of Watergate. However, her life extended far beyond the walls of the Washington Post city room. In a sense, her life was a life of contrasts and similarities. After reading Katharine Graham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, Personal History, [...]

After reading the biography of Henry Kissinger a few months ago, I wanted to read more about the Nixon presidency. I turned to All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward for a closer look at the downfall of the crooked White House of Nixon.
Unfortunately, I found Bernstein’s and Woodward’s book to be [...]

We found out two weeks ago that we’re moving back to the USA (from Australia) next month. I began the process of searching online for an apartment we might want to rent. Our former home was one bedroom: we are now a family of three. That won’t work.
Lo and behold, I found that buying a [...]

Joy is hosting the Nonfiction Five Challenge. I told myself I wouldn’t join any challenges because I don’t want “pressure” to finish books in a certain time period, but this is one I’ll be doing anyway: read five nonfiction books between May and September. One of the five has to be a different subgenre (i.e., [...]