What I'm Reading Now...

The American Patriot's Almanac by Wm. Bennett and John Cribb is one of the neatest books I've bought for myself lately! It has a nice little introduction about what it means to be a patriot and then daily readings after that. I'm not reading ahead either! It's arranged, of course, by month and then by days and then at the end of each month there's a little bonus reading, like after February you have "Flags on the Revolutionary War" and after May there is "Flag Etiquette: Guidelines for Displaying and Handling the U.S. Flag." There's also text of the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence.

And here's the total book-geek in me - it's such a pretty book! There's no book jacket but it doesn't matter. The cover is sturdy and has the flag printed on front and then raised text with the title and authors. The pages in the introduction have lovely attention to artistic detail with lined margins and decorated corners. The pages are a nice quality cream colored paper. There are plenty of illustrations with the daily readings as well.

If you haven't picked up a copy of this book, you need to!

Since I can only read one entry a day, I am also reading a book my niece gave me for Christmas entitled Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals, by former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson. I'm a sucker for speechwriter books (I loved Noonan's book about her years writing for Reagan.) I'm not too far along in this one yet, but it opens with a lovely narrative of the excellent work Bush has done with AIDS care in Africa. Gerson tells of his own visit to one of the clinics in a very remote area of Africa and what the care Bush has enabled means to the people there. Bush has done more in his tenure for AIDS prevention and treatment than most people realize.

The book has received mixed reviews on Amazon (everyone's a critic, right?) and I'm not sure how much it will stick to actual conservative values yet, but I'll enjoy the brief look inside the Bush White House either way.

On an unrelated side note, I started back to work this week after the long holiday break so blogging has been sort of light. Yesterday I did something bizarre to my back, no idea what, and have had crazy lower back pain for about 24 hours. It's better now but not GONE so I'm parked on the couch with a heating pad, beer, my puppy, books, and laptop. Life is good.