So many books, So Little Time. April 23, 2020

Copyright © 2020                               John F. Oyler

April 23, 2020

So Many Books, So Little Time

One positive consequence of being sequestered is the fact that it has provided me with a few more hours each week to devote to reading. My love of reading has always placed high on my list of blessings.

An inventory of the pile of books within reach of my favorite chair in the living room would be a good guide to my current interests. The first one I reach for each day is “Jack Frake”, which is the first book in the “Sparrowhawk” series. It was a gift from my former student and dear friend Kevin Abt.

There are six novels in this series by Edward Cline that bring “a radically new perspective to the events leading up to the American Revolution”. The first book begins in England in 1744 with a ten-year-old boy who has run away from home and joined a band of free-traders, a courteous name for smugglers making a living circumventing King George II’s tariffs.

Isn’t it remarkable that we are still struggling with the question of free trade versus protective tariffs over two and a half centuries later! This gang played Robin Hood by providing the common folk with affordable goods, much to the dismay of the government.

Next down in the pile is Erik Larson’s current best-seller, “The Splendid and the Vile”. It deals with the first year of Winston Churchill’s role as Prime Minister, beginning in May, 1940, with the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain. This is the fifth of his books I have read, and is as entertaining as the others. Larson’s style is to overlay irrelevant details about the daily lives of participants in a momentous event upon the event itself.

Because of my intense interest in this specific time in history I have decided to supplement my reading of Larson’s interpretation of it by rereading Churchill’s wonderful “Their Finest Hour”, the second of his six-book series of recollections of the years leading up to World War II and the war itself.

Comparing and contrasting the two books is fascinating. One wonders which paints a more accurate picture of the times. Larson has the advantage of objectivity and access to related writings by other people undergoing the same experience as Churchill. Nonetheless my interest in the subject drives me to dig deep into “Their Finest Hour”, which reads like the communiques from a war correspondent, which Churchill actually early in his career.

“The Splendid and the Vile” is this month’s selection for Book Club, a group of seven chronologically (mostly) disadvantaged gentlemen who get together once a month, ostensibly to review a book we have all read. Actually our monthly meetings are often more social than academic. We have been together long enough that we have read slightly over three hundred books.

Last month was our first virtual meeting, which I hosted using my University Zoom license. After a lot of octogenarian fumbling I was finally able to get the five of us available together in a teleconference. We missed Norm, a physician with his hands full these days, and Larry, unable to participate because of family problems. The rest of us carried it off successfully, though it was a poor substitute for wine and snacks in someone’s living room.

The book we reviewed was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. Surprisingly none of us had read it previously, though we were all familiar with Bela Lugosi and the well-known movie. Equally surprising was the fact that the novel is so well written. Its epistolary style, presented as a series of documents written by the various characters, works quite well as a vehicle for telling this complicated story.

Our choice of books to read comes from many sources. The previous month we had read “Mind and Matter”, the story of John Urschel, a professional football player who gave up a lucrative athletic career to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at MIT. Urschel reported that he was heavily influenced by his mother. Somehow we learned that “Dracula” was her favorite book; it turned out to be a good choice for us as well.

Prior to “Mind and Matter” we read Tim O’Brien’s memoir of the War in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried”. It was preceded by “The Meaning of a Poem”, an anthology of poems arranged by form. We each were assigned one form – I got a quick education in the villanelle, a form with which I had no previous experience.

Other books last year included “Overstory” by Richard Powers; “Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind” by Yuval Noah; the play “Inherit the Wind”; Larson’s “Dead Wake”, the story of the sinking of Lusitania; “Battle Songs, Paul Zolbroyd’s Korean War novel; Paul Greenberg”s “Four Fish”; and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. An impressive, eclectic list.

Back to my favorite chair pile – next comes “The Liberator” by Alex Kershaw. It is the subject of the second of six workshops Glenn Flickinger is presenting at the Mt. Lebanon Library on World War II. The story of maverick Army officer, Alex Sparks, it will be presented via teleconference.

Next comes Brian Greene’s “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos”. It has resided in my pile for quite a while. Reading it is “one step forward and two back” – an amalgam of cutting-edge physics and philosophy. I am too stubborn to give up on it.

At the bottom is “Singing in the Saddle” by Douglas Green, a member of “Riders in the Sky”, a prominent western singing group. My brother loaned it to me, knowing my love of cowboy music. So far it has prompted me to watch one old Gene Autry movie and one featuring Roy Rogers.

Needless to say there is no danger of my getting bored during sequestration; I have enough books on my “must read” list to last for quite a while.