Before now poetry has taken notice
Of wars, and what are wars but politics
Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?
from "Build Soil"
Robert Frost

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

The Library

I've always been a bookworm. My parents raised me in a house that had virtually every open wall covered up by a bookcase. I read through most of the Encyclopedia Brittanica as a kid, and I hit up old chemistry and linear algebra textbooks for what I could understand. We read classics at family dinners and on road trips- Swiss Family Robinson, The Wind in the Willows. I loved historical fiction, especially books from the age of sail.

Iraq was good to me on the reading front. I had a lot of spare time to fill, and instead of watching Simpsons, Girls Next Door or whatever $2 DVD the Iraqi vendor had just added to his lineup with a bunch of the other guys, I read. I got through Atlas Shrugged, The Face of Battle and The Mask of Command. I read Fiasco and The Golden Bough. I read through the Bible.

I haven't been as much of a reader since I've been home. College classes hit hard, and my perfectly delightful girlfriend occupies a good bit of my time as well. Still, though... I recently read most of the way through Martin von Crevelds The Culture of War (the library asked for it back before I quite finished). I enjoyed it, though longtime Clausewitz fans may disagree. The Al-qaeda Reader is on my nightstand, and Militant Islam in Southeast Asia is waiting for its turn. The Islamist and Doug Stanton's Horse Soldiers are in the mail.


Summer is coming.

Welcome, Crittenden Warmongers! Feel free to browse around.

5 comments:

  1. It sounds to me like you are adjusting to life after war. Some of us never did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Read The Fountainhead; IMO much better than Atlas Shrugged.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it." ~James Bryce

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stupid libraries should be happy people still read, instead of asking for their books back all the time. Really.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Books from the Age of Sail! Would that include Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series (from which the movie Master and Commander was distilled)? I got hooked on those last year. The Royal Navy and the Napoleanic wars, The War of 1812. Heady stuff.

    Enjoy your summer.

    ReplyDelete