Books: John Adams
Written by Bone on July 14th, 2008
John Adams relies heavily on the letters that Adams wrote and received from his wife, and from various people in congress.
I was really impressed by level of the everyone’s writing in the 18th century. Even in short, private letters to his wife, his prose is very elegant.
I shudder to think that if, by some unlikely turn of events, I were to become a famous historical figure, some future historian might use this horrid little blog to reconstruct my life. Maybe I should try to improve my writing skills, just in case I become president someday.
McCullough basically edited together these letters along with the diary entries of all the characters of the revolution, and made it into a novel. Though I am not an expert in novels, but the book seems to follow all the rules of character development, etc, which makes it much more pleasant to read than a list of dates and events.
There is perhaps a bit more detail than one would like in a regular novel. I was not always interested to know what Adams ate for dinner all the time. Nonetheless, it was interesting enough that I voluntarily read 750 pages of history. I suppose that fact recommends the book highly enough of itself.
I give John Adams 5 Jihadis out of 5
This is the first (and so far, only) book that I’ve read entirely on my new Kindle. I had no problems with eyestrain (or any problems at all, for that matter). I think that for massive, 750 page books, the Kindle is ideal. It’s just not fun to hold a big heavy book in your hands, especially when you are near the beginning or end, and the book get very unbalanced.
I spent a good bit of this past weekend on airplanes, and I was very glad to have my Kindle with me. With an 8GB SD card, my kindle will hold 8,200 books. I recently learned that Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books was the largest in North America during his lifetime, and I can hold more than that in the palm of my hand, crammed into my coach seat, as I hear over the intercom that we are “9th in line for takeoff.”
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AM
I give you points for reading the book rather than renting the HBO miniseries.
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AM
Credit where credit is due, the HBO miniseries actually inspired me to read the book.
I thought the HBO series was excellent, and I still think so after reading the book, although there were lots of changes made. I really doubt Mrs. Adams was a hot as Laura Linney, for example
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how’s the battery life?
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Battery life is very good. With the wireless radio off, I think I could go at least 4 or 5 days without a recharge.
I was out of town for 3 days, this weekend without my charger. I used the wireless for maybe an hour total, and probably read books with the wireless off for at least 12 hours, and the battery never got below 50%.