Jenny's Library Books Mid-January

I had to post this after our podcast episode about reading goals for 2015 went live, otherwise this pile would have not exactly made sense.  But you can see my reading goals in this pile!  Doesn't January always start out that way, with great commitment to our goals?  Reading goals are no different (although I don't get tired of reading the way I get tired of, say, trying to not eat sugar.)

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
The Absolutist by John Boyne

The top three books are not related to New Guinea! Ferrante is an author I wanted to read so much she's on my goals list for the year. Ron Rash is the January selection for the On the Southern Literary Trail group in Goodreads, and I'm always trying to read more southern literature. The Boyne is for my in-person book club and possibly the first book I've read set in World War I.  I've started it already so I can pass it on to another book clubber before we meet, because our town only has two copies total.

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, 1961
Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age by Robert Gardner and Karl G. Heider
The Asmat of New Guinea by Michael Clark Rockefeller

The rest of the books are for my month of reading in and about New Guinea, both sides.  Three books have to do with Rockefeller - the newer book, Savage Harvest, is about Michael Rockefeller's death in New Guinea.  He died there but two of the other books in the pile are his photos and his journals, so clearly some items survived! Gardens of War is meant to read alongside another book I need to request from interlibrary loan, and the Jared Diamond will be quite an undertaking. I've always meant to read a book by him, and this one happens to be about the Danu people in New Guinea. Convenient!