What is Kathleen Ann Goonan reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Kathleen Ann Goonan, author of This Shared Dream.

Her entry begins:

Much of what I write is historic fiction, so my library is full of the kind of nonfiction that feeds that addiction. Last spring, wearing my Visiting Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology hat, I taught a Science, Technology, and Ideology course that I created, using biography. I began with Desmond and Moore’s Darwin, which, I think, was an eye-opener for my students and of great interest to me.

In that vein, I am presently reading The Philosophical Breakfast Club, by Laura J. Snyder, which expounds on the rich vein of the history of science in Victoria’s England. These were heady times, and the people and events of the age led straight to our present technological age with nary a bend in the road. We were just waiting for the necessary scientific tools, the painstakingly catalogued data, for the explosion to take place.

Snyder’s Prologue features a cameo of Coleridge proclaiming, at the third meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Cambridge in 1833, that...[read on]

Among the early praise for This Shared Dream:

“A tough-minded, kind-hearted, fiercely intelligent novel.”
--Ursula K. Le Guin

“Kathleen Ann Goonan’s This Shared Dream is a richly imagined tale of gypsies and jazz, Nazis and nanotechnology, war and assassination and the Summer of Love. As elegant and complicated as the ever-changing time streams that wind through it, This Shared Dream is a must-read in this or any world.”
--Connie Willis

“A wild ride through alternate histories. Brilliant.”
--Jack McDevitt

“What if you could travel through time to fix what is wrong with the world? The world would resist, and the very act of trying would create parallel worlds with their own problems. This wondrous book, the story of a handful of people who seek to alter the twentieth century to create a better future, acknowledges the inhumanity of war and yet celebrates the joys of music, art, friendship, and family. And it reminds us that the future is made by the children of the present. I loved this book, and I heartily recommend it.”
–Eileen Gunn

Learn more about the author and her work at Kathleen Ann Goonan's website.

The Page 99 Test: In War Times.

The Page 69 Test: This Shared Dream.

Writers Read: Kathleen Ann Goonan.

--Marshal Zeringue