Sunday, January 30, 2011

I should forget my book more often.

So I went to work yesterday and I forgot my book and I can't be without one, that would be scandalous. So I had to get coffee (that's required by Act 1434 of my Bloodstream) and I searched the "Bargain" books at B&N. Borders has mad cheaper books, that's for sure.

I got Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates bc I had seen her on The Daily Show years back and remembered she was funny. This book is about the Puritan origin mythos of America, and her investigation into it. And within the first 25 pages I was cracking up left, right, and center. Tonight though, less than halfway into the book, I found the winning line:

"If Nancy Drew were trying to get to the bottom of Winthrop's petty rivalry with Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley, the book might be titled The Mystery of the Pretentious Wainscotting. What happened was, the assistants had agreed to build a fortified new town across the Charles River from Boston, which, per New England's usual creativity with naming things, they called "New Town." (It would eventually be renamed Cambridge, after they founded a university there. Because whatelse would men who attended England's Cambridge University name a university town?)"

This book is precisely what I would write if I wrote history books. Complete with sarcasm and pop culture references. It's like she hacked my brain. Or rather, I hacked hers.


Also, can we talk about the repeat names in New England. New York, you are no exception either. Duplicate town names make the baby AJ cry. (Try to find another Gouverneur. I DARE YOU.)

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