What I'm Reading
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Monday, April 12, 2010
Time to go through the stack of books and share what I've been reading lately:
I'll start with the boring research: A Fierce Discontent: The Rise And Fall of the Progressive Movement In America, by Michael McGeer. I have this idea for an alternative history fermenting in my brain (ewww!). I have a basic story going, but I need to define a divergence point and figure out exactly what changes. Thus I've been digging into stuff from the Regency until about 1930 - on both sides of the Atlantic.
This book is fascinating, if not a little ponderous. But then, it's a history book. The thing that fascinated me about this book is that it looked at the Progressive Movement from a wide point of view. It doesn't just dwell on the successes of the movement. It's a "warts and all" sort of book which looks at it through a wider lens of society. On one hand, that's where it got a little ponderous. On the other, it was necessary to put it into perspective with what was going on in the world at the time. It was a real eye-opener on some levels. If you listen to people talk about progressives today, most of them don't really understand what went on. "Progressive" seems to be a code word that goes along with "socialist." I don't think that's quite right. Sure, there were some aspects that conform to socialism, but there were others that just didn't go with what we consider to be socialistic practices. I was surprised to discover that Jim Crow laws and the patchwork of alcohol laws we have here in Texas have roots in that movement. These were a bunch of busybody moralists. On the other hand, the movement tried to reform child labor laws and public education. If you tried to extrapolate their policies to modern times, you'd get an odd combination of advocates for Health Care Reform combined with the moralists AND the folks who engage in things like illegal wiretapping. It's complex, which is a concept people don't want to hear in this sound bite world. Granted, that's overly simplified, but I do want to make the point that sound bites and code words just don't do the job.
And speaking of research...
I'm deep into Connie Willis' Blackout. This is set in the same universe as To Say Nothing of the Dog. For those unfamiliar with that book, it involves historians at Oxford University who travel in time to observe. This book is concerned mostly with the Blitz, Dunkirk, and child evacuees. The system is supposed to be set up to drop historians in places where they can't interfere with history. And yet... It's a fascinating book, meticulously researched. I'm fairly close to the end and have no clue where it's going.
And speaking of page turners...
I plowed through Changes, the latest book in Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series. I don't want to give any of this away, so I'll steal Paul's review: "Wow!" As is typical with this series, Dresden finds himself in some sort of deep trouble on the very first page, and... That would be telling.
So there ya go. I've still got one more book on the TBR list, but won't get to it for a couple of days. Paul is still working on it. I have to wait my turn. I should use that time to catch up on sleep.
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