Reading list: lighthouses
It is a better subject than it sounds. The early part is mostly about fire: coal braziers on stone towers, where the real problem was keeping the fire fed in a gale. The Fresnel lens, a stack of glass rings that bend light into a single beam, changes everything about halfway through, and the author is clearly happy to arrive there.
Things I liked
The keepers' logbooks, quoted at length. Mostly weather, supplies and who was ill. Very little drama, which makes the occasional sentence about a ship in trouble land harder.
Next
A short book about maps, which I mostly picked for the cover, and a re-read of an old field guide to wild mushrooms that I will never use as instructed.