Stuff I'm Stuffing My Brain With

I tend to read (and listen to audiobooks) in clusters - that is, I simultaneous read and listen to two or three books at a time.  

This time around, I'm enjoy three books that are directly related to ongoing interests of mine.

In my car, I'm listening to an audiobook of "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America," a recent book tracing the violently abbreviated Presidential campaign of RFK.  It's actually surpisingly relevant 40 years later, considering all of the issues we're facing today - it also reveals the beginning of an evolution in race relations in this country that has culminated with Barack Obama's candidacy.  Some of Obama's campaign style, in fact, is inspired by Robert Kennedy.

Yes, I'm also reading actual books!  

"The Real Oliver Twist - Robert Blincoe: A Life That Illuminates A Violent Age" is an historical biography of a workhouse child turned human rights activist whose story may have inspired Charles Dickens to write Oliver Twist.  The truth about workhouse children - the ill-treated young  slaves that drove the industrial revolution - is even more brutal then Dickens portrayed in his book, which was meant as social commentary.

Finally, I'm reading "Devil May Care," the newest James Bond novel.  Author Sabastian Folkes is the latest in a succession of estate-approved authors to adapt Ian Fleming's immortal British Spy.

All in all, it's a good selection this time around.  Something for every occassion, as it were....