only, like, half of this post is about pregnancy...

So, I really do still read, despite pregnancy eating my brain (how much I retain is a completely different issue). 

I worked very hard at not mentioning the pregnancy to anyone but a select few for a long time, but now that the floodgates are open, it's All Pregnancy, All the Time. I even posted a picture of the bump to Facebook this morning, heaven forgive me. All this must be incredibly boring for my friends who are not interested in that sort of thing and/or used to tune in to my social media for dog shenanigans. Just as I really don't want to become one of those mothers who only hang out with other mothers - I've been on the childless receiving end of that, and it sucks - I had good intentions about simply being pregnant while I go about my normal life. And to a large extent that's exactly what's happening: I go to work, we walk the dogs, we go to see friends, etc. I had to buy new pants, and a couple times a month I have medical appointments, but so far (knock on ALL the wood) nothing has changed enormously. 

Except that I'm growing a human being, HOLY CRAP. And that I have to put tons of thought into all the stuff we need to buy, and all the things we need to learn, and picking a daycare, and AAAAIIIEEE. (Baby stuff we have purchased to date: two swaddling blankets. The end.) So I apologize for all this pregnancy-madness, and in advance for the impending baby-madness. I'm very wary of alienating readers with this preoccupation, but I have to be honest about the fact that it is a preoccupation, in a big way. Plus the workplace policing of what I ingest has begun, and there is no way that's not going to be entertaining / appalling blogging fodder. 

I am sure there will be baby + dog shenanigans. So there's that to anticipate...?  

Read lately:

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea, by Philip Hoare. Contained some interesting (and devastating) stuff about the history of whaling, but was mostly about Philip Hoare, and occasionally the prose got completely overwrought. 

The Dreams of Ada, by Robert Mayer. Non-fiction book about a disappearance in Ada, Oklahoma and how two young men were convicted of murder without any evidence that the disappeared person was, in fact, dead. This book fell victim to the true-crime theory that long, long letters from barely-literate people are worth reproducing in their entirety (I blame Norman Mailer for this - let's face it, you can blame Norman Mailer for most things), but having made peace with skipping those parts, I found this book well-written and gripping. 

Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, by Nathaniel Philbrick. His latest, about the beginnings of the Revolutionary War in Boston. I really enjoyed it, but I think if you weren't quite familiar with the Boston area you'd get very confused about the geography involved. There are a few tiny maps scattered here and there, but mostly Philbrick just talks about troops marching from town to town without explaining where the towns are in relation to each other. Maybe this was written for Bostonians specifically. Worked for me. 

Rest Not in Peace, by Mel Starr. My Early Reviewers book. The latest in a series I know of but hadn't read before, about a 14th-century British surgeon who solves crimes. Starr's done his research, but lets the reader figure out archaic words and customs largely from context rather than infodumping, which I greatly appreciate. The story itself was no more than fine, but I liked the style. 

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs, by Elissa Wall. Ever since reading Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, I've been fascinated by the Mormons and their various sects. This book was overlong and not particularly well-written, and I did wonder if Wall ever really figured out how babies are made (it's possible that even after leaving the sect, she continues to believe that birth control is immoral, and that's why she keeps having babies even when it's a bad time to do so), but parts of it are effectively creepy, especially if you've already read about Warren Jeffs in Krakauer. I'd recommend you stick with his stuff, rather than this, if you want to know more about the topic.