On Books & Reading: My TBR Stack for Late March 2022

Yesterday, Dear Reader, I wrote in A Certain Point of View, Too about my list of movies to watch on home media (mostly on “old school 2K” Blu-ray, but with some 4K UHD Blu-ray titles in the mix) during the last week of March. Whether or not I’ll stick to my To Be Watched (TBW) list is uncertain; nevertheless, a TBW list exists.

Today – since I’m feeling somewhat uninspired to write about anything more substantial – I will now share my more customary To Be Read (TBR) list of books that I’m reading – or trying to read, anyway – on this last week of March.

I’m a history buff. I have been interested in that subject since I was six years old, and it is part of who I am. I studied journalism in high school and college because that field, as they say, helps write “the rough draft of history.” It’s also – when you don’t have teachers who must adhere to state government requirements or teach it in such a way that you find yourself falling asleep in class – a fascinating topic; history, after all, is our story, and learning about the past informs us about why things in 2022 are so screwed up.

Accordingly, my late March TBR stack is strictly non-fiction. And it consists of the following titles:

• The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain, Stephen Dungay
• Watergate: A New History, by Garrett M. Graff
• The Bay of Pigs, by Howard Jones
• The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It, by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague

I won’t finish any of these books by the end of the month; for instance, the Bowden-Teague book, The Steal is particularly daunting, not because it is poorly written or uninteresting, but because it reveals just how committed many Trump supporters are to their cause – wrong-headed as it may be – and how gullible they are. Many of the folks that the authors interviewed and whose accounts of the 2020 elections are at the heart of the narrative truly believe that the Democratic Party committed election fraud and that Joe Biden is therefore an illegitimate President.

I also – as I have pointed out in previous TBR-related posts – do not sit down in a comfortable location in the house to read a book for hours at a time. There is no such place in this house; the closest thing to a suitable reading room (with the right amount of lighting and a comfortable sofa to sit on) is the living room. We have the sofa, but the lighting there is far from optimal. In my room, the lighting can sometimes be optimal, but the futon is uncomfortable.

I really miss my old house. It was smaller than the one I live in now, but the living room was properly lit and the couch was comfy and nice.

Well, it’s later than my usual posting time and I’m not in the best of moods, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.