Jim Hines - The Mermaid's Madness
The sequel to The Stepsister Scheme, Mermaid continues the story of the Princesses - Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. The premise is simple - these are the stories of the ladies after their fairy tales are over. It's fairy tales meets Charlie's Angels, basically. Hines has assigned logical abilities to each of the princesses, based on their pre-existing stories, and they solve crimes. The first book was quite good, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Neil A. Wynn - The African American Experience during World War II
This is more or less research for me - it fits into what I'm writing about for my dissertation, and it fits into my syllabus for next semester. The stories of African Americans in the US Army from the Revolution onwards are fascinating in their own right, and WWII is really where the men and women in the segregated units were finally able to prove their citizenship. The modern Civil Rights Movement can be directly linked to WWII (although, really, by WWII, the movement was quite established). This looks like a pretty good introduction to the material - Wynn has included some of the primary documents in the book, and the footnotes seem to be fairly comprehensive. If my books were not already ordered for next semester, I might consider putting this in instead of the book I've already got - it will certainly be added to the supplemental reading list. And that's from flipping through it; hopefully it lives up to my expectations.
I'm going to be out of town next week. I should have access to the internet, but I won't be going to the library next Monday. I will probably do a supplemental trip on Thursday or Friday to pick up some paperbacks, so look for a continuation of my beach reading series!
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