Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Vacation and a couple more books

I've taken a few days off, part of J's spring break. He has some homework and I'm largely catching up on to dos and cleaning (or I mean to, anyway), but it's nice. Something about not being pushed by routine - being able to bust away and actually think about some stuff for a bit. I should do this more often...

Today we took a walk around the neighborhood, hitting a couple of our favorite shops- hung out with Wayne for a bit at Futons 'n More, stopped by the Genesee Bakery for some goodies and lunch. And before I dive into cleaning, I'll update you on the latest books:

Book #3 - Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The reason behind the rhyme by Chris Roberts. Chris is a librarian who runs historical tours around London. In detailing the origins of some of our most common nursery rhymes, he taught me a lot of the nuance and personality behind British history, place names, etc. Especially fascinating is the subject of rhyming slang where "Lady" means "fiver" because of Lady Godiva - it's a type of slang that makes you think to get it. I may have to search for more on this.

Book #4 - The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. I got this because I had never heard of caucasian-featured mummies in China before. There is a lot of information on the region (the Uyghur Autonomous Region) and puzzling out who these people were, how they lived, and how they got there from just what they wore into the grave. Anyone interested in the history of textiles or linguistics will find this quite interesting. My only gripe is that Barber seems to come to a conclusion - and then tell us again and again and again. By the end, I kind of wondered why it was still going.