Summer Reading List Meme

I haven't been terribly good about finishing books I've started in the last year, so I've taken a few off the list and put them out of my sight, at least for now. Nevertheless, I still have a reading list, including a few re-reads.

• Sweet Promised Land - Robert Laxalt



• Sand: The Never-Ending Story - Michael Welland (his blog is at Through the Sandglass)



• The Hard Road West: History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail - Keith Heyer Meldahl (my dad has been waiting for me to finish this one so I could respond to his request, "let me know if the geologic history of the Basin and Range is correct
  in the Hard Road [West].")



• A Mine of Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950 - Sally Zanjani (I may have read this before in the 1980's)



• Geo-Logic: Breaking Ground between Philosophy and the Earth Sciences - Robert Frodeman (This one looks a little dense, to me, but it's on my list, and I want to get through at least some of the chapters)

Sweet Promised Land falls into the catetgory of a re-read. The book is a biography of Dominique Laxalt, a Basque sheepherder in Nevada, as written by his father, Robert Laxalt. I first read the book sometime in the 1980's. I highly recommend this 50th anniversary edition (it was first published in 1957).

This summer reading-list meme seems to be predicated on listing seven books, but I'm not going to push my luck and will only list five. I have already completed the two books listed below - in the last two months, no less! I'm encouraged by that, and by the fact that I know I'll finish Sweet Promised Land. Finished:

• Not Becoming my Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me along the Way - Ruth Reichl



• Annie's Ghosts: A Journed into a Family Secret - Steve Luxenberg

Yay for already finishing two books! Much better than my 2008 book-reading record (except for some escapist paperbacks).

Other book lists can be seen at Clastic Detritus, Reporting on a Revolution, and The Dynamic Earth.