Ken's October Book Recommendations

My bedside table is always stacked with reading material, but here are two of the books that I’ve been reading this month. I hope you enjoy them as much as I am.

I'm currently reading The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving stone. It is a popular novel about Michelangelo and his creation of David and the Sistine chapel ceiling, among other masterpieces. The beauty of it for me is not in the novelization of his life, but in Irving Stone's six years of research and the wonderful historical account of the Renaissance from an artist's point of view.  I know the book is considered an old chestnut with moderate literary merit, but the historical picture of the period is fascinating. I'm going back to Florence this year and there is nothing more I enjoy in Florence than going to see the Michelangelo masterpieces and the Giotto frescoes. 

I'm also rereading No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It won the Pulitzer Prize and rightly so. I am always reading about World War II from the point of view of Churchill and I will never tire of it. But this is a remarkable history of Franklin and Eleanor during that same crucial time period. Though I first read the book about 10 years ago, I can't put it down.