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SusannaG

SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady

Just another GR refugee.  Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.

Currently reading

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
Paul Watson
Progress: 6 %
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Ed Yong
Progress: 40 %
Wizard's First Rule
Terry Goodkind
Progress: 49 %
Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant
Tracy Borman
Progress: 14 %
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
Helen Czerski
Progress: 20 %
The Hanover Square Affair
Ashley Gardner
Progress: 10 %
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
Beth Archer Brombert, Massimo Montanari
Progress: 10 %
Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth
Holger Hoock
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Progress: 9 %
Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
John Guy
Progress: 20/512 pages

Something About Me

A lot of us are posting (or re-posting) little "get to know me" posts, so here's mine.

 

I'm a stroke survivor, of eleven years now.  Reading is one of the things I didn't have to re-learn how to do.  (Talking and telling time are two others.)  I don't think I've ever been so grateful for something in my life as when I looked at a sign in the ER and realized I could still read it.

 

I no longer work (I have the stamina of a slug for one thing, and can't drive, for another), but my academic background is in history.  My interests are mostly in early-modern and modern European, but I'm OK on American history as well. 

 

I live in South Carolina, where "the war," unlike in the US generally, does not mean the war that ended in 1945, but the one that ended in 1865.  I have ancestors who fought and died in that war - on both sides.  (It amuses me as a historian that I also have ancestors who fought on both sides of the English Civil War.)

 

I still read a good bit of non-fiction: mostly history, but also sometimes science or some other field.  I also read a lot of mystery, historical fiction, and their love child, historical mystery.  Frankly, I read anything that stays still long enough, probably not including horror (I read a Steven King once, in about 1983) and westerns.

 

I don't give out 5 stars very generously (once this year, so far, though I think it's going to be twice pretty soon), but am fairly generous with 4 stars.  A 3-star read for me is a perfectly decent book.  (It's also my default rating for "I know I read this book a long time ago, but don't remember much of what I thought of it.") 

 

One of the things I like about being here on BookLikes is that it makes me want to review more.