Well, yes, because they make fabulous reading material!
As we continue to navigate these times together (yet apart), it can be difficult to find meaningful topics to share with you all. Why should today be any different? In honor of much silliness, welcome to today’s edition of a game I like to call What’s on your nightstand?!
First, some ground rules. 1) Family friendly. 2) If it’s not, the funnier you can make it, the more points received. 3) I made all these rules up because I suck at games. Except Super Mario. I will crush you.
This post alludes to my intellectual side. Start laughing now; you won’t stop. I enjoy long walks on the beach, snuggling up beside a toasty fire place, and hot coffee. What do all these have in common besides warmth? My sidekick: a cover-bound destination to anywhere. Clearly I’m missing the bookstores most.
All the books! What have you been reading? After several comments regarding my book shelf photo several posts back, it occured to me I can hold a type of virtual book club! I seriously need friends.
Currently there are 3 books I’m enjoying. Although I have strict opposition against reading multiple books at once, sometimes it happens. Are you telling me you never get bored? Personally I prefer series books, but I’ve read countless stand alone titles and have been thoroughly entertained.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do.
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I ask you –
What are you currently reading?
Preferences?
Tell the truth: do you judge a book by its cover? Yes. I’m known to read a book solely on the basis I was drawn to the cover art.
Running on Fumes 
I am predominantly a reader of non-fiction. I was once in training to be a professional historian back oh so long ago, and I still focus much of my reading on near-professional or professional grade history. This is some serious stuff, and I usually arrange it so that I have a “buried in the stacks of the main library” environment to read and concentrate.
But not on the nightstand. The nightstand is the locus in my scheme of organization for the entertainment, the more laid-back, the approachable.
On the nightstand right now —
“Lake Woebegon Days” by Garrison Keillor. This one speaks to my Midwestern roots, and my childhood memories of the small towns out on the edge of the Great Prairie in western Illinois. Ya shure, you betcha.
“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, by Walter M. Miller. Considered by many to be the best Science Fiction novel ever written, an apocalyptic tale that takes place in a post-nuclear holocaust Earth. Entertaining and thought-provoking on multiple levels, this is a piece of literature that cannot be recommended enough.
“A World Lit Only By Fire” by William Manchester. Professor Manchester started to write an introduction for a colleague’s work about Magellan the explorer, and ended up with popular history treatment of Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. This work has not always held up well in the 20 years since it was published, but Professor Manchester does a bang up job describing Martin Luther, his disillusionment with the Church, and the beginnings of the Reformation.
“HMS Surprise” by Patrick O’Brian. The third novel in O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey-Stephan Marturin series. Rip-roaring good fun, and any author who can use “floccinaucinihilipilification” in an actual sentence and get away with it is okay by me.
For serious stuff, I’m re-reading “Almost a Miracle”, a treatment of the American Revolution and Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, and finally “Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the 16th Century” by Dr. John Guilmartin. Hardcore stuff, but absolutely worth it.
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I was very intrigued by your description of each book, then I arrived at the “floccinau…” yes, that word… and the sombre tone took a turn toward my funny bone! Thank you for sharing, Dan. Your appreciation of good literature knows no bounds.
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