Reading

I'm the kind of person who reads multiple books at a time. Currently, I have bookmarks in (which means I'm more or less "actively" reading; books may be set aside for weeks to months)

Founding Brothers (Joseph Ellis)

Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein; this is the book my book club chose for this month)

One of Ngaio Marsh's mysteries (I can never remember titles; it's the one with actors on a train and the leading-lady's husband gets iced)

A book of Madeline L'Engle's essays on faith

The American Senator (Anthony Trollope, who is probably my favorite novelist).

I also have plans to read all of the "Dark is Rising" sequence, in order, in a short enough span of time that I can remember details from the books I read earlier in the sequence. So far I've re-read the first book ("Over Sea, Under Stone") and just started the second ("The Dark is Rising")

I switch out books as I feel moved to, or as I feel the need. Because sometimes, I don't FEEL like reading a particular thing.

I'd most actively been reading "Stranger in a Strange Land" because it's getting close to the end of the month and I'm expecting our Fearless Leader to send out the e-mail calling us all to someone's house to discuss (or not discuss, as the case may be.) But you know - the book tires me out a little. I know, I know, it's a great masterpiece of 20th century literature and it's one of the best examples of science fiction, but the book just still tires me out. I feel like there's stuff I should be knowing, I should be recognizing. I feel like Jubal Harshaw is a thinly-veiled-someone-from-late-50s-or-early-60s-America that I should know and recognize (And that he's not Hugh Hefner, no matter how much I get that vibe). I feel like the "Foster" in the Fosterites should be traceable to someone.

I feel like it's a roman a clef, and I don't have the "clef."

And here's where I think I'm probably excessively girly for the book: the parts that interest me the most, that I want more detail on, is how people live - there are vague references made to 'real' versus 'syntho' food. And Caxton, early on in the book - he has a lawn in his living room. Specially engineered grass that grows indoors! And I find myself getting impatient during the geopolitical parts, the stuff where they're meeting with Douglas and all that. (I'm at the part now where Valentine and Jill have quite literally run away and joined the circus - except they just got fired).

I don't know. I can see how some people are bowled over by this book, how it can affect their worldview - and yet, I am totally immune to that. I am actually mainly frustrated by it right now. (I expect Valentine will die at some point - or rather, "discorporate." I don't know why - I just get that foreshadowing feeling that things are going to break very bad for him at some point.)

So, last night, I picked up "Founding Brothers" instead. I like to have a non-fiction book going at all times. I find non-fiction calming - yes, calming, even war stories. Sometimes, fiction actually gets to be too much for me - there's too much emotion, too many people running around having problems. And then, I turn to history (the main non-fiction I read is history). There is something, as I said, calming about it - I don't know if it's because it's OVER, or if it's because it's REAL, or if it's because it's generally presented without too much drama. But there's something about it that calms me down when I feel like the novel I'm reading is getting overwrought.

I do not claim to be anywhere away from "normal" on the so-called "autistic spectrum" but one way in which I am somewhat like Rain Man is that I cannot stand it when there's too much emotion, when there's too much drama. I want to withdraw, to go somewhere quiet and spare, and not deal with these messy people who are angry or upset or running around waving their arms. And history seems like a good place to do that. (Yes, ha ha, I know history has its share of drama and more, and yet - the way it's generally written, there's an inevitability about it that somehow organizes the drama and makes it meaningful.)

I'm midway through the chapter on Washington - "The Farewell." And you know, it gave me a feeling of "the more things change..." They were talking about how some - even Tom Paine - vilified Washington in the press, and in part, his decision to leave (which was a good one, I think - he did not want to seem an American monarch, which he would have had he kept going up for re-election until he died in office - and I think the precedent of two-terms-and-out is a good one) was precipitated by that vilification. And you know, it's funny - in a way, it's reassuring to know that even back then, people talked smack about their leaders. And yet, it's also distressing - even in what I've been taught to see as a "Golden Age" of American statesmanship, there were people who thought the leadership was wrong or flawed or unworthy. (In a way, it's like reading Paul's letters - a lot of the crud that went on in the early Church is still going on today, and that is both reassuring: maybe we've not got so much worse, and distressing: almost 2000 years now and we've STILL not figured it out?).

But one of the things I like about history is that for me, it's a slower read. I slow down when I read it - because I don't want to miss information. (Too many years in school; I still feel like I'm going to be tested on factual stuff). Sometimes when I'm reading a novel, I read too fast - especially, for some strange reason, first-person-narrator novels. And then I almost get a sort of reader's indigestion. Or maybe, rather, a hangover from reading - where I find myself phrasing things in my mind in the same way that the author of the book I just tore through phrased them, or I find myself looking at the world more through the eyes of one of the characters than through my own eyes. And it's a little disconcerting - which is why I turn to history or other non-fiction to clear out my brain at times like that.