The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

On Reading

I guess I should probably, you know, say something here every so often. Apologies. I started playing Diablo II again, and then I dragged Whir into it, and, well...yeah. You know how it goes.

Working at the library Wednesday, as I am wont to do from time to time, I ran into a delimma, and it was this. Working check-in, as I do, it is astonishingly easy to come across books than people have checked in that sound like books that you may like to read. And since you're right there and all, you can set said book to the side and check it out for yourself. Figure I check in a few hundred books each day, and you perhaps begin to see the depths of my temptation, here.

So it's fairly rare that I don't leave on a Wednesday without checking out SOMETHING to read. Wherein lies the problem. Because I also do other things besides read in my life, my backlog previous to this week looks like:

John Lewis Gaddis - We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Due in a week. Currently scrambling to finish having had it for almost 2 months)

Gerald Astor - The Mighty Eighth: The Air War In Europe As Told By The Men Who Fought It (Just finished after about a month. More delimma - it was a good book, and now I want to read more of his stuff)

Patrick O'Brien - Master and Commander (Well, it's ok. The whole Napoleonic ship thing isn't quite doing it for me though. But it does remind me to see if I can find more Sharpe novels.)

Also in the same stretch of time, I read The Great Gatsby and at least 2 other books I don't remember. Gatsby was really good, for the record. Damn HS for making me read Hemingway and not Fitzgerald.

On the waiting to be read list, we have:

Charles Adams - When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Yeah, I dunno. But it's short, and it's always interesting seeing what the enemy thinks. Which is why one of these days I want to read Mein Kampf)

David Anthony Durham - Pride of Carthage (It's a novel about Hannibal. How could I not read it?)

And then, because I am weak, I noticed in the checkin pile this week:

John Sugden - Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 1758-1797

I saw it and said "Cool!" And then I said "But it's 800 pages. When am I gonna read all that?" and put it back on the cart. But then I said "But you want to!" and took it off the cart and checked it out.

What's worse is two things. First one is that Astor and Sugden both have other books that sound like cool things to read. If Sugden's any good, I'm doomed - he's also got biographies of Sir Francis Drake and Tecumseh, both people I'd like to know more about. Too, Gaddis' book has me wanting to find a biography of Nasser and read THAT, because he sounds interesting.

The second thing is my existing to read pile of stuff I own, which is getting frightening. Among other things, we have a history of Japan's involvement in China and the Pacific through 1945, Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Keegan's The Face of Battle, a biography of George Washington, a history of the ancient world, a history of the Supreme Court, and a pair of boxed sets containing books on World War II and women in history. Also half of the complete Far Side collection. Most of this stuff has been waiting since Christmas, and some of it's been waiting for two or three years.

Which isn't really a complaint. I'm actually fairly happy about it, because right now I'm reading more things that I want to read than at any point since high school. Since going over to England in the beginning of '04, I've probably read more books , definitely for fun but maybe total as well, than in the previous three or four years combined. College really takes it out of you.

Posted by Dwip at August 25, 2005 2:00 PM