Friday, July 25, 2008

Friday Finds


Here's what's new in my bookpile this week.

I received my much-anticipated review copy of Mort Zachter's memoir Dough, about how he discovered his family's hidden fortune.
His family ran a bakery for many years in New York's Lower East Side and Zachter grew up believing his family was very poor. Then one day he found out they weren't.
The book is his family's story. It's short (less than 200 pages) and I'm about a third of the way through it already. It's good stuff.

I was also very excited to pick up Cathar Castles : Fortresses of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209-1300. I'm a geek- what can I say. And several
years ago I took a hiking trip to the Languedoc region of France, where these castles are located, and hiked to several of them. The trip was not really a shopping trip, and there weren't gift shops near the castles the way there probably would be if they had been in America, so I actually wasn't able to find anything like this book when I was in France. It was therefore actually very cool to pick this little volume up the other night at my local Borders!

It's a good book with some great photos and basic historical information about the era, the Cathars and the castles. The history of the Cathar religion is a tragic one and one that doesn't get a lot of attention. I was grateful to have had the chance to learn a little about it on the trip and also glad to find this book.

Last but not least, I got So Long at the Fair, Christina Schwarz's latest. It's a story of one day in the life of a man who must choose between his wife and his mistress. I started it and it seems pretty good so far. I've got some other obligations on my plate at the moment but I'll get back to this one as soon as I can!


What did you find this week?

6 comments:

MizB said...

Thanks for playing in this week's "Friday Finds"! :)

Andi said...

Ooh ooh! I heard about Dough on some tv show or other...maybe the Today show. Of course, I promptly forgot about it, so thanks for the reminder!

Jill said...

I read and reviewed So Long at the Fair on my site...I'd love to hear your thoughts. Parts of it were confusing and hard to keep up with for me.

avisannschild said...

Have you read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse? It's disturbing in parts (as you might imagine since it's about the crusade against the Cathars), but it's an interesting read.

Anonymous said...

1. *Dough* is also on my "must read" list
2. don't worry about the geek bit; I picked up a book about cemetary markers - very interesting history!
3. I thought *So Long at the Fair* would be my next book, when I rec'd it last week ... but then I looked at the calendar and realized how quickly my end-of-July deadline was approaching on some other items .... I'll get to it!

Tara said...

I'm reading So Long at the Fair currently...it's fine, though not my favorite subject matter.