Shift of Gears

A lot of thought over the past two weeks; some bloggable, some not.  Also, some of extreme import, some not so much.  For something somewhere in the middle, I offer a shift of gears in my Current Reads.

Currently, well, currently as of the third week in May, I was thick in 1940 Europe as the Wehrmacht was rolling unstoppably east and west.  Technically, I was still reading PKD’s Exegesis, though that had stalled a few weeks earlier.

Then, said I, this World War II stuff, suddenly and swiftly I realized, is eternally depressing and intolerably insufferable to my soul.  I need a break from the war thing.  190 pages in to Beevor’s (excellent, mind you) book The Second World War, I need to put it down.  Mr. Atkinson, Mr. Eisenhower, I must put your books, which I planned to read in June and July, back upon the shelf.

Similarly for PKD.  Though not as soul-crushing as reading through the endless atrocities of the Germans and Japanese – even in passing – the further I read into the Exegesis the more pity I felt for the man.  A genius, no doubt, but a severely unbalanced one.  Still, an interesting read, but I have too much on my plate to continue further exploration of this work.  I decided to purchase it should I find a copy well below its $40 hardcover price and will return to it at some murky, undefined period in the future.

Instead, I found intense and unaccustomed joy in re-reading Tolkien’s Hobbit for the first time in nearly forty years.  I plan on giving a nice copy of the book to Little One for her tenth birthday this September, and after she’s done I think I’ll read it aloud to both she and Patch in the fall.  Then I moved on to the pageturner known as The Shipkiller, a unique cross between Melville and Cussler that I just can’t put down.  Once I finish its 430 pages – probably Thursday or Friday – I will turn to another childhood classic and joyful memory, one again I haven’t read in nearly forty years, Watership Down.

Now I have to weed through what I should and should not reveal here at the Hopper in future posts.