what i’m reading

Muhammad: A Prophet for our time, by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong is explicit in her introduction that she’s combating Islamophobia, so hers is an admittedly sympathetic treatment. Still, it seems a worthy introduction to someone like me who is relatively ignorant about the Prophet’s life. On Muhammad’s eschewing of conspicuous consumption: “Luxury was not simply a waste of money but ingratitude, a thankless squandering of Allah’s precious bounty.”

The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism, by Aaron Sachs. “Good storytellers, like good ecologists, weave webs, enrapturing their audience with the delicate, sticky power of organic connectedness” (p30).

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury. Wicked carnival comes to town. Good and evil. Bradbury’s wonderful prose. Short chapters. My wife and I are reading this one aloud. I read it in college and loved it; we’ll see how it holds up.

Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money, by Christopher Paul Curtis. My wife and I are listening to the audiobook of this one. It’s an absurdly, (genuinely) hilarious young adult novel about a cuadrillion dollar bill with James Brown on the front.