Inklings Week Celebration and Vacation Reads

First up, starting next week it's one of the most fun weeks of the year, Inklings Week! A week where we celebrate CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien along with their wonderful works that have made such a profound impact on so many people's lives. My longtime blogging friend Jamie is hosting the celebrations as she does every year! I am taking part in different parts of the celebration. First, on Monday night Jamie, myself and author Katherin Reay will be on a panel discussing Tollers and Jack, some of our favorite works and what they mean to us. A little later in the week I'll also be guest posting on Jamie's blog. Here is Jamie's post with the panel information and a sneak peek of what is to come, we'd love to see you around the old interwebs! 

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I'm very fortunate that I (a vaccinated human) get to see my sister and her husband (also vaccinated humans) for vacation. After more than a year of being cautious and seeing no one and doing nothing the prospect of a vacation feels like a dream.  But what is a vacation without some vacation reading? I picked up and packed two books from Half Price books today, though, if we're honest I might need a few more. I wish I was a Kindle user because I'm sure it would take up less space but it's just not my preferred kind of reading. 

"Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance" by Ian Buruma 

Summary from Goodreads: Ian Buruma returns to his native land to explore the great dilemma of our time through the story of the brutal murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh at the hands of an Islamic extremist. It was the emblematic crime of our moment: On a cold November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man, Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants, shot and killed the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, great-grandnephew of Vincent and iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the vocally anti-Islam Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that "blasphemed" Islam. After Bouyeri shot van Gogh, he calmly stood over the body and cut his throat with a curved machete, as if performing a ritual sacrifice, which in a very real sense he was. The murder horrified quiet, complacent, prosperous Holland, a country that prides itself on being a bastion of tolerance, and sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native country to try to make sense of it all and to see what larger meaning should and shouldn't be drawn from this story. The result is Buruma's masterpiece: a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a true-crime page-turner and the intellectual resonance we've come to expect from one of the most well-regarded journalists and thinkers of our time. Ian Buruma's entire life has led him to this narrative: In his hands, it is the exemplary tale of our age, the story of what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West and tolerance finds its limits.

The War for All Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo by Roy and Leslie Adkins. (My weird obsession with maritime battles continues, obviously)

Summary from Goodreads: Roy Adkins (with his wife Lesley) returns to the Napoleonic War in The War for All the Oceans, a gripping account of the naval struggle that lasted from 1798 to 1815, a period marked at the beginning by Napoleon's seizing power and at the end by the War of 1812. In this vivid and visceral account, Adkins draws on eyewitness records to portray not only the battles but also the details of a sailor's life, shipwrecks, press-gangs, prostitutes, spies, and prisoners of war.

And then literally any of the several magazines that Quinn has with her because she has a slight addiction to cheap magazine subscriptions. Doing her best to keep print journalism alive, that one!