I’ve been plowing through Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, by Erik Larson. I have to take a break because reading about piles of dead bodies is starting to get a little unpleasant.
But the lead-up to the dead bodies, where Larson intersperses accounts of activities in Galveston (both general and individual), biography of Isaac Cline, politics at the national Weather Bureau, and the building and approach of the hurricane, reads like a thriller.
I also have, on my kitchen table, another book by Erik Larson: Thunderstruck, which appears to be about Guglielmo Marconi, his development of the wireless telegraph, and how it assisted in catching the murderer, H.H. Crippen (of dismembered-wife-in-the-cellar fame).
However, Marconi and Crippen will have to wait until I’ve read the biography of Queen Elizabeth I that’s waiting in my bookcase.
I have abandoned the struggle to read A Fly for the Prosecution: How Insect Evidence Helps Solve Crimes. This guy may be a leader in forensic entomology, a hard worker with a damn strong stomach, a genius with an infinite capacity for taking pains, and all the rest, but he sure writes a boring book.
