Sun Books 2007

I'm pretty late on planning this year's outdoor reading, but I still have two months for it. In the summer, I go for books on the Mediterranean, Central and South Asia, and Africa, especially travel narratives and history. It's a sensory engagement thing. The list is just a guideline - last year I ended up reading a whole lot of India books, and the previous year it was novels by Amin Maalouf. Anyway:

• The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, and sequels, if I like them (edit - loved it, must read sequels)


• Road Through Kurdistan by A.M. Hamilton


• Persian Pictures by Gertrude Bell


• The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes


• Forgotten Queens of Islam by Fatima Mernissi (reread)


• Journey to the Source of the Nile by Christopher Ondaatje (reread)


• From Stonehenge to Samarkand: An anthology of archaeological travel writing


• Maybe Ajax by Sophocles


• Maybe one of Arnold's old books about Indian history, perhaps Prehistoric Ancient and Hindu India by R.D. Banerji (1934)


• Maybe The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay (reread)


• Maybe Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World by Stephen O'Shea


• Black Sea by Neal Ascherson (edit - added)

If you have any suggestions in this vein, I'd be interested!

Gentle Botswana fiction; NIH feedback; raccoons

Today was officially the last day of my vacation, not that I expect to get a whole lot done tomorrow. R. and I had lunch at what would be our neighborhood pub, if the U.S. had such things, and played three games of pool. I also read The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the whole thing, which was wonderfully restorative, and now I must read all the others. Six, I think. I've had a special feeling for Botswana since high school, as it was our assigned country in Model U.N.

We got the official critique of our NIH proposal today, so that we can revise it for resubmission in October. I was pleased that the very first sentence referred to our proposal as "extremely well written." I made a point not to read the comments carefully today, as that wouldn't be in the vacation spirit, but it seems that most of what we need to do is detail the psychometric properties of the survey items we intend to use at follow-up. We'll meet in August and plan the changes.

Oh, also - when I was driving to the library this morning, three small raccoons dashed single-file across the street, about a block from my house. Cute now, but by fall they may be into thuggish mischief.