It's been something like six weeks since my last blog post.  I'm going to go ahead and call it a summer vacation, because otherwise I'd have to call it what it is, which is laziness.

I feel as though I owe my readers a thorough accounting of the things I've read in the children's and YA genres since my last post, so here is a brief list of all the books I've read in the last couple months that fall into those categories:  none.

Maybe you are surprised?  Maybe you considered me a more diligent worker?  I share your outrage.  There is no excuse, unless you consider Skyrim to be an excuse (and if you don't then I have serious doubts about your understanding of the modern human condition).

Anyway, I've been reading, just not stuff that I'm supposed to be blogging about.  But nuts to that, I'm going to blog about it anyway.

I'm currently reading On the Run in Siberia which is the non-fiction account of a Danish anthropologist who somehow got it into his head that it would be a good idea to set up a fur company to rival the giant Russian fur cartel, which is exploitative of the environment, the native hunters, and basically everything it's possible to exploit.  If you have been paying any attention to the news out of Russia, you can probably guess how it went.  I'm on record as being fascinated by Russia, so maybe I'm biased, but I think this book is a pretty fascinating glimpse into how business gets done in other parts of the world.

Before that, I read God's Middle Finger which is the (surprise) non-fiction account of a journalist's trip through the Sierra Madre in Mexico, which is basically a place to which law and order have still yet to arrive.  The place is riddled with outlaws and bandits, and not the romantic Wild West types.  These are drugged up hayseeds with nothing to lose but their sense of machismo.

I'm just now realizing that for the last six weeks I've essentially been reading books about life outside the bounds of modern government.  Perhaps this is some kind of unconscious crie de coeur?  Probably not.  Both of these books are rather terrifying.