Author: 459856pwpadmin

I finished two books in the past couple of days.  Actually I finished both the same day.

I had been reading Christine Falls by Benjamin Black and really really enjoying it.  It took a while because I limited myself to reading it on the exercise bike and, well, I haven't been as diligent about that activity as I should be.  It didn't matter, the book was fascinating, even if a bit slow and thoughtful at times, and I had no trouble reading it or remembering where I was.  I'm looking forward to his next book, which is newly released.

However, since I didn't decide that this book was a "keeper", the next one will wait for me to get it from the library or audible.  It does strike me as odd sometimes, what I keep and what I don't.  Thank goodness for libraries, although there are enough books I borrow and then want to keep (The Rain Before it Falls comes to mind).  Still it is better than buying and then having to sell or otherwise find new homes for books.  For example  I loved The Cure for Modern Life which I read while G was in the hospital.  I could not put it down and I have picked it up and flipped through sections again and again.  I have read books, even this year, with more beautiful prose, but the writing here fits the characters and the story.  I like the way the author addresses many issues in modern life through her characters, and she does not fall back on "pat" answers when exploring her premise.  What is a good person?  The characters are well developed, and like most of us, they don't see beyond their own little preconceived views of the world.  But each of them is more complex than they appear to the others.  And in the end, you can't tell who is a good person from the superficial facade they present to the world.

But here, I have gotten off the current subject, meaning books I just read.  I also finished Kabul Beauty School which was a joy to read.  Reading this book gave me a feeling for people, for the women in Afghanistan perhaps, whose lives I really could never know at least in my current life,  and about whom the meaningless words in newspapers and scholarly books on current events and political unrest and history never address. In the end, to me, it is the individual stories that are the most important.  Perhaps there is no "great" accomplishment here, and society is not changed, but I continue to believe that is the individual connections we make that are the most important. No I don't understand. But perhaps now the veils over my eyes have seen a glimmer of something else so that perhaps understanding can someday come. Whether or not the endeavor was a success, the book is fascinating, as is its author.  The fact that she is often rash and irreverant, perhaps at times even a bit of an "ugly American" in her insensitivity, these things are also the qualities that allowed her to accomplish so much.   I don't know if the beauty school came to anything.  I don't know if the lives of women in Afghanistan are better than they were or not.  I believe that some women were elected to Parliamentary positions, but I don't know how much bearing this has on the lives of most Afghani women. I do know that the book made me look at the world a little differently.

When the papers came this morning, I immediately put everything else aside and sat down with a cup of coffee to read this article by Luc Sante.  So much of my own feelings about my library are expressed here.

Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals is a fabulous book and the fact that it took me nearly a year to finish it has nothing to do with the book or the quality of the writing. 

Each time I picked up the book, I practically devoured the pages.  Each time life intervened I had to literally tear myself away…and I had to leave the book behind, untouched, because there was no way I could read it at a measured, practical pace.

Granted I have long been interested in books about Lincoln.  I have a small collection on my shelves, but none of them address about Lincoln's character and his political and social acumen the way this book does.  I am not a scholar.  I actually knew very little about Lincoln's cabinet members although now I am itching to learn more about Seward, and generally, although I love biography, I would not think that politics or the inner workings of politics or a Presidential cabinet would be interesting.  I was wrong.  I was fascinated. 

The book has played a tremendous role in how I look at so much going on in the world today because I was so wrapped up in the details of what was going on in the world, at least the American World, then.

I started the book last fall.  Then I had to put it down.  I started again in February or early March and got about 3/4 of the way through before I put it down again.  I finally finished it early this month, and even though I knew how the book would end, who wouldn't, it tore me apart. Although the book is long and it is a work of history, seemingly assiduously researched, it is not a book I so much read as absorbed.  With each page I felt transported into another life and time. I mourned with the nation when Lincoln died even though I knew it was inevitable.  I finished late at night and went to bed in tears.  I was that wrapped up in the story.

Another time I cried was when Lincoln was re-elected.  Here we are involved in an unpopular war (but then all Amreican wars have drawn considerable protest).  The Democratic candidate was McClellan, a popular general, running on a platform to end the war.  I was stunned by this quote:

Most impressive, the soldier vote had swung overwhelmingly in his favor.  In the armies of the West, he won eight out of ten votes, and even in McClellan's Army of the Potomac, Lincoln earned the votes of seven out of every ten soldiers.  Many of these soldiers still admired McClellan but could not countenance the defeatist Democratic platform or the fact that the Confederacy was obviously hoping the young Napoleon would win.  But there was something else, something Democrats had failed to understand.  Over the years, Lincoln had inspired an almost mystical devotion among his troops.  "The men had come to regard Mr. Lincoln with sentiments of veneration and love", noted an Illinois corporal.  "To them he really was 'Father Abraham,' with all that the term implied."  By supporting Lincoln, the soldiers understood that they were voting to prolong the war, but the voted with their hearts for the president they loved and the cause that he embodied.

I can't imagine anything like this happening today.