Books I've Read This Week

It's been awhile since I've done one of these. I've been away on vacation and didn't get as much reading done as I would have hoped but I'm back on track now.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky is an interesting little book about an everyday item, table salt. Honestly I didn't realize that salt was such a sought after commodity in history as it seems so plentiful now. It's interesting to see how some wars were won/lost just by the control of salt and it kinda makes sense how much food production was tied to salt before refrigeration units were invented. A pretty good read and you get to learn where terms "worth his salt" and "salary" come from.

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 1 by Jack "The King" Kirby is a collection of stories I've been wanting to look into for awhile. It collects in chronological order the books he was cranking out at the time so you get Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, The Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle. While Kirby was an absolute master of draftmanship not all of these stories are gems. I really enjoyed the New Gods and Mister Miracle issues, kinda liked the Forever People but found the Jimmy Olsen issues to be darn tedious to read. I'm going to give the second volume a try as I can check it out from my library before I decide to buy anymore collections.