Last book of '09, first book of '10

My next manuscript will be set in the Scottish Highlands in 1806. I recently stumbled across Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 while looking for free Kindle downloads, so it was a natural research choice for me.

It was slow going, especially when I was reading on a plane (as was often the case over the past two weeks) and couldn't look up the places the Wordsworths were visiting to help me visualize what was going on. However, it did give me a useful picture of what the Highlands were like 200 years ago--half empty, and half wild--and how an English observer might view them. Wordsworth seemed almost offended by the half-tamed landscapes--she kept wanting more trees and hedgerows--and she was obviously much struck by the friendliness of the people and their relatively dirty and unpolished living conditions.

To start 2010, I read Soulless (2009), Gail Carriger's well reviewed and highly recommended debut. I didn't love it as much as all those reviewers and recommenders, but the world-building and characters carried me past occasional awkwardness in the writing itself.

My favorite books of 2009

2009 wasn't my best reading year ever. While I didn't keep a tally, I think I finished fewer books than normal, quite possibly falling short of 100. Partly that's because I was busy with work and writing, but I also started more than my share of books that I couldn't bring myself to finish. I've become entirely too picky. If there's a historical error, a cliched plot device or character, or more than a handful of awkward phrases in the opening chapter, that's it.

So one of my resolutions for the new year is to try to offer other authors the same grace I hope to be granted once I'm finally published. I'm not going to read a book that bores or offends me, or one whose flaws outweigh its virtues. Life is too short to read bad books. But during that all-important opening chapter, I'm going to look for reasons to keep reading a book rather than reasons to cast it aside.

That said, here are my ten favorites of the books I finished last year, listed in reverse order of completion.

1. Carbonel: the King of the Cats (Barbara Sleigh, 1955). One of many children's books I never read as a child, since I skipped straight to the adult section of the library when I was 9 or 10. Set in post-WWII England and stylistically reminiscent of the Chronicles of Narnia.

2. Refuse to Choose (Barbara Sher, 2007). Self-help for people with too many interests to focus on just one.

3. An Echo in the Bone (Diana Gabaldon, 2009). Being the further adventures of Jamie and Claire Fraser in the American Revolution. What's not to love?

4. The Unlikely Disciple (Kevin Roose, 2009). A Brown student spends a semester at Liberty University. My favorite of the half dozen or so outsider accounts of the evangelical subculture I've read over the past few years.

5. Naamah's Kiss (Jacqueline Carey, 2009). First book in a new sexy epic fantasy trilogy set in the same world as Carey's two Kushiel trilogies.

6. The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman, 2008). Just a beautifully written and moving single-volume fantasy.

7. Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Kathryn Joyce, 2009). I write alternative history, and the quiverfull movement feels like MY alternative history, since 15 or 20 years ago some of the people I was around preached male headship in the church and marriage, eschewal of birth control, etc. I never liked the ideas, but some of them made a semi-convincing case it was what God wanted for us...so the part of me that believes in parallel universes wonders if somewhere out there there's a version of me in a patriarchal marriage raising a brood of 10 or 12 children. So I've developed a strange fascination with the life I might've lived if I'd made different choices. This book is a good intro to the movement.

8. Wellington: Pillar of State (Elizabeth Longford, 1972). Longford's is the best Wellington biography out there, IMO. This is the second volume, recounting the Great Duke's post-Waterloo life and work, and while Wellington the politician is much less appealing to me than Wellington the commander, this is still a lovely biography...and a useful reminder in an overly politicized world that those with whom I disagree can still be honorable, well-meaning, and decent individuals.

9. The Sharing Knife: Horizon (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2009). Final volume in a thoroughly delightful romantic fantasy series. Maybe 2010 will be the year I finally try the Vorkosigan books.

10. Forever Princess (Meg Cabot, 2009). OK, I admit it. I love the Princess Diaries series. Pure well-executed fun.

Recent reading

A combination of illness and holiday travel has kept me away from blogging the past few weeks, but I've been able to do a little reading in the midst of the chaos.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb (2009) is just that: the whole text of Genesis with gritty and often explicit cartoon illustrations. I suppose some might find the graphic illustrations offensive (this is emphatically not a Bible story for the kids), and others might find its exact adherence to the biblical text boring, but for me it opened a new window on a book I'd read over and over again and reminded me how deeply weird many of the Genesis stories are when you don't have a pastor or a book of commentary right beside you to tell you what spiritual meaning you're supposed to take away for your own modern life.

For seasonal reading, I went to Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present (Hank Stuever, 2009). Stuever, a Washington Post staff writer, spends the 2006 Christmas season and part of the two that follow with three families in Frisco, TX (a Dallas exurb), using them as a window on Christmas as it's observed now. His conclusions aren't groundbreaking--as a culture we spend piles of time and money pursuing unattainable ideals and a nostalgic past that never really existed--but it's well-written and absorbing.

In Are Women Human? (1938), Dorothy Sayers posits that society treats men as individuals first, but defines women by gender rather than allowing us to be individual human beings with varied interests, dreams, and vocations. I found it a bit disappointing how much of it still felt relevant to my experience 70 years later--though if anything I feel more pressure from other women to conform to feminine expectations and/or to see myself as a woman first and a person second than from men.

Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language (Patricia O'Connor and Stuart Kellerman) takes on so-called rules that aren't, urban legends of etymology, and the like. As a series of brief essays, it's a good book for the bedside table, the bathroom, or other situations where you aren't looking for an extended, focused read.

Book blogging catch up

As it turns out, finishing one job and starting another eats all of your time, both for reading and for blogging about it. I've only managed to finish two books in the past two weeks.

Waiter Rant (Steve Dublanica, 2009) is yet another book from a blog, this one the story of a man who drifts into a career as a waiter. Apparently his blog is mostly humorous restaurant war stories, but the book is a little bit of that plus meditation on how the author, who started out as a Catholic seminarian, ended up where he did. Since I've been wrestling with the question of vocations/mission in life vs. finding reasonable satisfaction in a day job myself, I enjoyed reading someone else around my age dealing with the same questions.

The Kingdom of Carbonel (Barbara Sleigh, 1961), is the second book in the Carbonel trilogy of children's books about a girl and a boy who find themselves involved in the intrigues of Cat Country in 1950's England. A good read if you enjoy Narnia and/or Harry Potter

Reading, week of 11/22

Last week I actually didn't finish a single new-to-me book--almost unheard-of, for me. Too much was going on with my job search for me to easily focus on reading, and none of the books I tried worked for me. I did read, of course--I just turned to old favorites, like the Jane Austen on my bedside table and the Louisa May Alcott on my Kindle.

This week was better, more relaxing all around, and I finished three books.

Carbonel: the King of the Cats (Barbara Sleigh, 1955) was meant to be a read-aloud for my 5-year-old, but when I got it I realized it was too long and complex for her. But I read it myself anyway and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's set circa 1950 in England with a girl and a boy finding magical adventures, and it feels similar to the Chronicles of Narnia in voice and tone, but without the religious overtones. I'd recommend it for kids who enjoy Narnia and/or Harry Potter, and for adults like me who've never outgrown that kind of story!

Serenity: Better Days (Joss Whedon, 2009) didn't work as well for me. I think I'm going to stop trying the graphic novels based on Joss Whedon TV shows, because the appeal just doesn't come through in quite the same way. I had some trouble following the story, possibly because I don't read a lot of comic books, and Mal just isn't quite Mal when he's not Nathan Fillion, you know?

Touched by Time (Leanne Shawler, 2005) is a time travel romance in which a modern woman and a Regency gentleman both see ghosts in their bedroom (it's the same room). Eventually they touch each other, which pulls the modern woman back to 1812, but only between sunset and sunrise. She knows that the hero is destined to disappear, presumed murdered, and she makes it her mission to use archival research to solve the mystery and give him a happy life. A fun, quick read, and a different take on both the Regency (hero is not an aristocrat!) and time travel.

Reading, week of 11/9

I promise next week I'll start with those writing craft and life posts. This week I was too busy actually doing the writing!

The theme of my reading week was Nostalgia. I picked up Betsy-Tacy (Maud Hart Lovelace, 1940) from the library hoping that I could read it to my five-year-old daughter who's just starting to like chapter books for read-aloud time. She wasn't interested--I'm learning not to bother with any book for her that doesn't have an animal on the cover!

But I'd heard so many people say the Betsy-Tacy series was an all-time favorite that I decided to read it myself anyway. And I enjoyed it, in a pure nostalgia sort of way. Betsy and Tacy are two little girls growing up Minnesota circa 1900. It's a sweet book, and I liked it enough that I'll probably try the later books, where I understand the reading level gets higher and the plots more complex.

In The Food of a Younger Land (Mark Kurlansky, 2009), Kurlansky discovers a never-published WPA project from 1941 looking at local and regional American foodways and cuisine. He provides an introduction and excerpts. If you're interested in the intersection between food and culture, you'll enjoy the book just to see how much has changed in the last 70 years or so. E.g. tacos were unknown outside of the Southwest, Pacific salmon were considered inferior to the Atlantic variety, etc. It's not the kind of book you read cover to cover. I focused on what I wished I could eat (everything from the Vermont sugaring-off, game dinners) and what I'm glad I don't have to (chitlins, lutefisk, and yes, I know both of those still exist).

Reading, week of 11/2

I'm planning some changes to my blog in the next week or so. I want to make it less of a reading diary and more about writing, research, and the writing life.

I'm still figuring out how I'm going to go about that. I may set up a weekly schedule--say, Research Mondays, Craft Wednesdays, and Time Management Fridays--or I may just commit to blogging three times a week on a writing-related topic but not being terribly regimented about topics and times.

But I have decided to limit my reading diary posts to once per week. With that in mind, here's what I've been reading the first week of November:

The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome (Christopher Kelly, 2009): Until recently, I was only familiar with the Roman Empire at its peak in the 1st Century AD. I knew early church history and the Marcus Didius Falco novels (there's you a contrast!). But of late I've been seeing a lot of books about the fall of Rome. (Imperial anxiety on my own nation's part, perhaps?) The End of Empire explores what can be known about Attila the Hun and how his actions helped cause the collapse of the western empire within a few decades of his death. I had trouble keeping all the eastern and western emperors and their generals and diplomats straight, but it helped fill out my picture of a corner of history I'm just beginning to explore.

I read the first chapter of Betraying Season (Marissa Doyle, 2009) several years ago when Doyle entered it in an RWA contest I was judging. Between the time my daughter was born in 2004 and when I went back to work in late 2005, I must've judged over a dozen writing contests. RWA chapters are always looking for volunteer judges, and I had enough time on my hands to answer most of the pleas for judges that went out. Betraying Season was one of the two or three most outstanding entries I encountered, and I was thrilled when Doyle sold it and its prequel, Bewitching Season. It's the story of a magically gifted young British aristocrat in the 1830's trying to improve her witchy powers while visiting her old governess in Ireland. If you liked Sorcery and Cecelia, give Doyle's books a try.

Cake Wrecks (Jen Yates, 2009) contains many favorites from the Cake Wrecks blog along with some new material. Fun for a laugh after a long week.

Flesh and Fire

Flesh and Fire (Laura Anne Gilman, 2009) is epic fantasy with an unusual twist--the otherworldly aspect of the story is magical wine. It's just the kind of fantasy I like best, set in a recognizable alternative Europe, with an epic, historical feel but without the standard swords & sorcery quest structure. And the world-building is wonderful, enough to hold my attention all by itself. That said, I was just warming to the characters and starting to put together the plot threads when the book ended--it's more set-up for the rest of the series than a self-contained story.

Napoleon

As my longtime readers know, I am not fond of Napoleon. Paul Johnson is likewise not fond of Napoleon. But as I read his brief 2002 biography (Napoleon: A Life), I found myself wanting to defend the emperor. Johnson sees Napoleonic France as the prototype of the modern totalitarian state, and therefore Napoleon as the progenitor of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the like. Possibly it's because I've seen far too many sloppy comparisons to Hitler and Nazism over the past few years, but that left me rolling my eyes. He might have a point if he didn't insist on exaggerating it, tossing around the "evils" and the Hitler references, and blaming ideas whose time had come on one person.

Despite my annoyance with the author, I'm not sorry I read the book. When you're researching someone intensively for your own writing, it never hurts to get another perspective, even if you disagree with it. But if you read one Napoleon biography, this shouldn't be your choice. I'm not sure what should be--I like Evangeline Bruce's Napoleon and Josephine and Christopher Hibbert's Napoleon: His Wives and Women, but those focus too heavily on his personal life to be comprehensive. If I find one that leaves me nodding and saying, "Yes, that's him," I'll be sure to let my five loyal readers know. :-)

Across the Nightingale Floor

I love the idea of Across the Nightingale Floor (Lian Hearn, 2003), a fantasy set in an alternative feudal Japan, complete with samurai and ninjas. I didn't quite love the characters, however--I just liked them--which kept me from being fully hooked by the story, though I finished it just to see how the plot would resolve and which of the three threads of his history the protagonist would choose to follow.

Shipwrecked and Seduced

Yes, the title is corny. I know. But books shouldn't be judged by their covers or their titles...though I have to admit that Shipwrecked and Seduced (Amanda McCabe, 2009) is an accurate description of the story in question!

I say "story" and not "book" because this isn't a full-length novel. It's part of Harlequin's "Undone" series of short historical romance stories, only available electronically. It's not something I would've sought out on my own, since I prefer longer stories and have trouble suspending disbelief that a couple could fall in love and commit to a lifetime together in 50 pages or less! But an online writers group I'm part of is doing a challenge where we try to write an Undone, so I decided to read a few. (I ended up deciding not to participate in the challenge because I've got too much going on finishing my alternative history and getting it ready to submit in the next month.)

This story's heroine is a young Spanish servant girl who's the only survivor of a shipwreck in 16th century Cuba. She's mistaken for a highborn passenger and decides to play along, but a handsome colonial official suspects she's not what she seems...

It's a very quick, very sexy story. It's well-done, evoking a sense of place and time in a few short pages, so I'd recommend it if the length and sensuality sound appealing to you.

Three Napoleonic Battles

In a way, I learned about Napoleon as a commander backwards. My interest in all things Napoleonic initially grew out of my reading of Regency romances, where the occasional hero is a veteran who served under Wellington. Nowadays it's rare, but in the 80's and 90's one sometimes ran across a Regency set in Brussels in the run-up to Waterloo, at the Congress of Vienna, or in Spain or Portugal during the Peninsular Campaign. Those were always my favorites, since I had a lurking interest in military history (possibly because one of my brothers started West Point the year I started kindergarten), and I liked the higher stakes than your typical Regency set against London high society or the pastoral English countryside.

Then I stumbled across Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series. I have to confess I started with the TV movies, after watching The Fellowship of the Ring and wanting to know what else the Boromir actor was in. But I read the books, too, and started researching the history behind them. Which meant mostly the Peninsular War, and mostly Wellington. Like the Great Duke, I first encountered Napoleon at Waterloo. As my interest in the era and the people broadened and I started to want to write about it myself, I learned more about Napoleon, but I still know Waterloo better than anything else from his career.

I picked up Three Napoleonic Battles (Harold T. Parker, 1944) as part of my ongoing effort to get a broader perspective on Napoleon's career. Parker analyzes the battles of Friedland (1807), Aspern-Essling (1809), and, yes, Waterloo (1815). In the first, Napoleon was at the top of his game and facing a Russian commander who made serious blunders, in the second he made blunders of his own against a solid opponent and was checked, but through his and his marshals' skill and his opponent's overcaution avoided a crushing defeat, and, well, we know what happened at Waterloo. (At least I hope we do. If you're reading this and thinking, "I vaguely recall Napoleon from high school history class, but isn't Wellington a boot and Waterloo an ABBA song?" please talk to me. I have books to recommend. You'll love them, I promise. History is exciting, and 1789-1815 especially so.) For the most part, Parker's conclusions are pretty straightforward--Napoleon got older. His health and energy declined, enough that he lost a mental step, too, though he was obviously still beyond unusually intelligent. His natural optimism was perhaps less tempered by realism--e.g. his stubborn refusal to believe the evidence that the entire Prussian army was indeed marching to unite with the Anglo-Dutch forces at Waterloo. Plus, his opponents got better, both in the sense of learning his game plan and that over decades of war, the cream of the other powers' generals eventually rose to the top.

For all that, it's a worthwhile and well-researched read, dense with detail. I expect I'll be turning back to the Friedland and Aspern-Essling sections as I develop my alternative history, and I never get tired of learning more about Waterloo. Wellington once commented (I'm paraphrasing wildly here) that you might as well write the history of a ball as of a battle--everyone who was there gives a different account, and it's impossible to pin down what really happened. To me, that's precisely what makes Waterloo especially so endlessly fascinating. Every time you look at it from another angle, you get another facet of the glorious horrible chaotic epic of it all.

What I've been reading lately

In my continuing Kindle excursion through the worlds of Louisa May Alcott, I read Jo's Boys. It is indeed very preachy, and I confess to skimming past a lot of the sermons to find out what happens to everyone. Oh, and if I'd written it, everything would've turned out differently for Dan. I sometimes envy 19th century writers--I'd give a lot to be able to introduce my characters with a nice backstory synopsis like Jane Austen does, for example--but I'm glad I don't have to set up characters for punishment as Moral Examples.

Staying in YA but on a much lighter note, I curled up with The Ex Games (Jennifer Echols, 2009). The heroine, a snowboarder with fear of heights left over from a childhood accident, has to overcome her fears to defeat her ex-boyfriend in a battle of the sexes that engrosses their whole high school, and incidentally to take advantage of a chance to take lessons from a pro.

Refuse to Choose (2007) was my second self-help book by Barbara Sher. In it, she describes "Scanners"--people who have trouble settling on one single direction in life. I recognized myself in almost every page. I've always felt like I should have some grand passion or vocation. And in one sense I do--my love for history and my hunger to write have been with me all my life--but at various points I've wanted to be a reporter, a theologian, a paramedic, a professor, etc., etc. And because I've never been able to make up my mind which one is my One True Vocation, I haven't done any of those things. Sher's book helped me see that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. She suggests that many Scanners search for a "Good Enough Job"--one that will match their interests and work style well enough to give them stability and contentment, while leaving them enough life space and mental energy to pursue other interests at the same time. Somehow that phrase alone was a revelation for me. A day job isn't quite the same thing as a Good Enough Job, you know?

An Echo in the Bone (and Kindle)

For our tenth anniversary, my husband got me a Kindle. Having read ebooks on my iPhone, I was ready to make the transition to a full-fledged e-reader, so the gift was a winner.

It arrived on Monday, so I decided to try it out by pre-ordering An Echo in the Bone (Diana Gabaldon, 2009), which was released on Tuesday. The book was downloaded and waiting for me when my alarm went off at 6:30--much preferable to making a special trip to the bookstore or waiting weeks for it to show up in my library hold queue. Also, I enjoyed being able to read on a fairly light handheld device I could stuff in my purse rather than toting around a bulky hardcover. On the downside, it's harder to page back to a previous chapter to remind yourself of some little detail you barely noticed at the time but that turns out to be important the next time the character shows up. And at least in this book there was a glitch where sometimes two words in a row would be italicized where clearly only one should've been. But on the whole I was satisfied with my Kindle experience and plan to use it extensively in the future.

Now, the book...as usual, it's hard to review a book deep in the series. If you love the Outlander books, you'll want to read this one. If you haven't, you'd be totally lost. (Actually, you'll be a little confused if you haven't read the Lord John series as well.) As has been the case in the last few books, the emphasis is less on Jamie and Claire and more on the broader cast of characters--we see a good bit of Lord John, Willie, Brianna and Roger back in the 20th century, Ian, a Quaker brother and sister whom both Willie and Ian befriend, etc. I've seen some readers complain about that, especially the emphasis on Willie and Lord John, but I liked it. Gabaldon has the IMHO unusual gift of making me care about a large cast of characters almost equally, and I thought those two were especially valuable because they're both English officers, thoroughly loyal and baffled that anyone would consider their king and their government tyrannical. Always good to show both sides, IMHO, especially when both sides have a point.

My only complaint is that authors who take three years to write a book shouldn't leave quite so many cliffhangers!

Little Men

I've been getting free and cheap downloads of classics and reading them on my iPhone's Kindle app lately. Mostly I've been reading old favorites, but after revisiting Little Women, I decided to get Little Men and Jo's Boys, neither of which I've ever read.

Little Men is a soothing read, just what I'm looking for an iPhone book, i.e. something I read in short snatches while waiting in lines or late at night when I'm having trouble falling asleep. That said, Louisa May Alcott's preachy strain, which shows up to some degree in all her books, is on steroids here, and none of the new young characters are as engaging as Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, and Laurie.

The Poor Relation

I've got a lot going on in my life now, some of which may eventually rate a mention on this blog once I know a bit more about how it's all going to turn out. Since I'm dealing with more stress and chaos than normal, I find myself turning to comfort reads. I've downloaded lots of free and cheap classics onto my Kindle-for-iPhone app, and I've been working my way through L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. Also, I've been trying out some of those older traditional Regency romances I buy whenever I can find them in thrift stores or used bookstores and pile onto my To Be Read shelf against the need for a good escapist read.

One such book was The Poor Relation (Cathryn Huntington Chadwick, 1990). It has all the usual trappings of the traditional Regency--high society life, a Cinderella heroine, a dashing hero in a red coat (the poor relation of the title), heiresses, fortune hunters, etc. It doesn't break new ground, and it isn't thought-provoking, but it's not supposed to be. And last week it was just the kind of literary comfort food I was looking for.

The Unlikely Disciple

The Unlikely Disciple (Kevin Roose, 2009) is yet another entry in that currently popular memoir subgenre, Person X Does Uncharacteristic Activity Y for Z Time Period. This one is even a direct descendant of a previous work: Roose got interested in his topic while working as a research assistant for A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically. But it's also the best outsider view of the evangelical subculture I've read yet.

As a 19-year-old Brown undergraduate, Roose decided to study abroad without leaving the country by spending a semester at Liberty University, having discovered he knew so little about evangelical Christians that he didn't even know how to talk to them. After a crash course in the lingo from a high school friend, he plunges into the Liberty life, taking 6 credits in the core curriculum and joining the Thomas Road Baptist Church choir. (At Brown he sang in an a capella group.) He goes undercover, posing as a relatively new Christian so he doesn't seem too suspicious for such errors as pronouncing Paul's Epistle to the Philippians as "fil-ip-PYE-ans." (It's "fil-IP-ee-ans.")

Though he never stops being appalled by his classmates' homophobia or the political and creationist indoctrination in his classes, he also can't help seeing his classmates and the faculty as human beings, many of whom he forms lasting friendships with. It's a useful reminder for me. As someone who's either evangelical left or slightly on the conservative side of mainline Protestantism, I don't like being lumped in with the Falwell brand of Christianity. I kept getting annoyed when Roose mentioned songs he sang at Thomas Road that we also sing at my church because how dare they sing what we sing when we have so little in common? But if Roose can befriend them, I can at least admit we're co-religionists.

The Chosen One

The Chosen One (Carol Lynch Williams, 2009) is a YA novel about a young girl in a fictional fundamentalist Mormon sect. Her family--father, three wives, multiple siblings--is loving and affectionate, and apparently somewhat on the fringes of the sect despite their devotion to their prophet and his teachings. The 13-year-old heroine, Kyra, is a loner and a rebel even within her family, sneaking out to get a book from the mobile library every week (all books except sacred texts being forbidden) and indulging in what in mainstream society would be an innocent romance with a teen boy from another of the compound's families.

When the Prophet has a vision that Kyra must become an elderly uncle's seventh wife, she has to reconcile her love for her family--and the knowledge that her resistance can put them at risk--with her unwillingness to go through with the marriage. The book is a page-turner, and the ending, though satisfying, leaves a host of realistically unanswered questions.

Eugenia

My hometown library had an extensive collection of Clare Darcy's Regency romances when I was growing up, but I don't think they had Eugenia (1978). It's a fun, quick read whose heroine is plucky, young, and unconventional, but not obnoxiously so. As is not uncommon in early Regencies, the romance is underplayed. The hero and heroine seem well-suited, both being rural, horse-mad types, but they don't spend enough time interacting to convince me that they know it. That said, if you like old-fashioned Regencies, heavy on the comedy of manners, light on the sensuality, Darcy's books are a good choice.

Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges & Brussels

I skimmed Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges & Brussels (2009) as very early scouting for a trip I'm planning to take in 2015. I mean to be at Waterloo (just south of Brussels) on the bicentennial of the battle, 6/18/2015.

It wasn't that useful for my purposes, because so much of the book is devoted to Amsterdam and so little to the two Belgian cities. Waterloo is a dot on the map, but doesn't even rate a mention, though it seems like an obvious day trip from Brussels to me. Even aside from my personal and admittedly quirky interest, I found myself more interested in the two Belgian cities than Amsterdam.