top ten tuesday

I DNF books all the time. Recently I’ve been having a hard time settling in to an audiobook for some reason. So, I’m going to list some recent good books that I didn’t finish.

After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller by Max Wallace

I was interested in this story that fills in the missing pieces of the life of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan that weren’t told in the film and play, The Miracle Worker. I knew that Helen Keller became a socialist activist but I didn’t know the details of her life. I also didn’t know that Annie Sullivan knew how to teach Helen because she had been blind. She was taught at a school for the blind (after getting out of a poorhouse) and lived with a deaf-blind woman there. Annie had surgeries that eventually gave her back her eyesight and then she became a teacher for Helen. So it wasn’t some kind of mental breakthrough that let her figure out how to communicate with Helen. She talked to her like she talked to the lady she lived with.

I wandered off from this audiobook because I started listening to some YouTube videos on my way to work and then it expired from the library.

Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Save the Earth by Nancy Marie Brown

I was interested in this idea. I’ve heard the stories about people in Iceland believing in elves. I wanted to know more. It was good in the beginning but then it started to drag.

American Sirens by Kevin Hazzard

This is the story of the first formal paramedic training started by Black men in PIttsburgh in the 1970s. I had no idea that it was such a new idea. I want to know more about the story but the way the story was told was bothering me on audio. It was a little too folksy in the language and it was a bit grating for me on audio. I might like this better in a book.

Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino

This book is so good. That’s the problem. After the first few chapters – about wild birds that help people find honey and Aborigine’s sweet potato fields that were destroyed by colonists’ sheep – I was so sad that I couldn’t go on.

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Again, this book is really good. I just wandered away because I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole (about potatoes) and started listening to stuff about that on my commute instead.