Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Buona notte, amici! I’m the designated doorstop tonight, keeping the Bookflurries salon open as cfk asked, until she can come back and thus restore order to the literary universe. Pico talked to her this weekend and says that she should be home this week. Best news I’ve heard this month!
Now, most of the time I read mystery and fantasy. And Jane Austen, of course. But with this new decade, and the faint inkling that possibly, some time in the future, what with the passage of time which has somehow accelerated, and of course theoretically, I might turn into an OLD PERSON, I have found myself exploring new worlds.
It started with Ken Burns, who should really get a new haircut. Mr. Emmet and I watched his Vietnam series back in 2017. The interviews with front line soldiers on both sides were great, but we sensed something missing in the narrative arc. It was as though the war — and South Vietnam as an entity — appeared from nowhere. Out on the far reaches of the internet the wags retitled it “CIA? What CIA?” and suggested supplemental reading.
Apart from bee books and bridge books and gardening books, non fiction seemed outre, but what the heck. So I read Inventing Vietnam: The United States And State Building, 1954 to 1968, by James Lovell, which is what it promises to be at what I think they call the granular level. And A Bright And Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan, also granular but lively, following one person into the quagmire. And 55 Days: The Fall of South Vietnam by Alan Dawson. And Embers of War, by Fredrik Logevall, which I should have read first because it’s about how the French got out of Vietnam and how the American got in.
They were all good and the last two were riveting. What ho, I said to myself. Maybe there’s something to this whole facts-based thing, no matter what the president says. So I read Nigel Hamilton’s trilogy on FDR and World War II: The Mantle of Command, Commander in Chief, and War and Peace. Hamilton says he wanted to give FDR’s side of the war as a counterpoint to Winston Churchill’s in his 6 volume history (a corrective, rather; FDR and the Allies seem to have spent a lot of time thwarting Winston’s determination to detour from The Plan, e.g. by having a do-over at Gallipolli). The first two were so good I pre-ordered the last one (which was very, very sad, because, as you probably know, FDR gets really sick and dies).
I can do this! — I told myself. Of course by then the pandemic was here and the campaign was underway and the political situation was like the last three days in The Lord of The Rings, when Sauron makes everything get really, really dark (except in LOTR I was really happy at that point because we were almost at the end! Finally!). What do you do in times like these?
One alternative was to look at brighter times. That meant The Bill of The Century: The Epic Battle for The Civil Rights Act, by Clay Risen. Great story, though I had three pages of notes by the end because I couldn’t keep the characters straight. As Risen says, it’s a story with many players— and not much character arc for most of them.
Another alternative was to look at darker times. That meant a warm welcome to In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larsen, all about the American ambassador to Germany in 1933 and 1934. The good news: It’s instructive and relevant — you’ll see some parallels between Germany then and the US now. The bad news: It’s instructive and relevant — you’ll see some parallels between Germany then and the US now.
Do you read nonfiction? Do you like history or biography or philosophy or memoir? Instructive books like Practical Beekeeping or The Play of The Cards? Or do you figure you get enough reality in real life?
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
