On Books & Reading: My TBR Stack – Any Progress Yet?

Greetings, Dear Reader. It is late morning in Lithia, Florida, on Tuesday, June 7, 2022. It is a warm, humid day here in the Tampa Bay area. Currently, the temperature is 84°F (29°C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 80% and the wind blowing at 2 MPH (3 KM/H) from the north-northwest, the heat index is 91°F (33°C). Today’s forecast calls for light rain throughout the day – but no thunderstorms! – and a high of 92°F (34°C). Tonight, skies will be mostly clear. The low will be 73°F (23°C).

We are now one week into the sixth month of the year, so I thought today I would avoid weighty, depressing topics and look at the To Be Read (TBR) stack in my bedroom and see if I have made a dent on it since May 13.

(Yes. My TBR stack is a literal one.)

Let’s see, last time that I wrote about what books I was reading, I mentioned:

• The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain, Steven Dungay
• Watergate: A New History, Garrett M. Graff
• The Bay of Pigs, Howard Jones
• Who Can Hold the Sea: The U.S. Navy in the Cold War, 1945-1960, by James D. Hornfischer

I also added SSN, one of the few novels by Tom Clancy that is not set in the late author’s Ryanverse.

I regret to report that I have not read even one complete chapter of The Most Dangerous Enemy, even though I am a World War II buff (as well as a military aviation geek) and the Battle of Britain is one of the campaigns that most intrigues me. I guess it’s partly because I honestly don’t set aside enough time during the day to read for pleasure, but mostly because I put it away in the bookshelf that sits in a corner of the kitchenette; my room is too small for that bookcase, and often I forget that a book on my To Be Read list has been placed there.

I did get one-third of the way through Watergate: A New History, and I am halfway through The Bay of Pigs, so I am making some progress with those two non-fiction books about political disasters that had enormous consequences on American foreign policy and domestic politics.

Since I am a fan of the late James D. Hornfischer, his final book Who Can Hold the Sea is at the top – literally – of the TBR stack, so I read at least a few pages every day. I’m one-third of the way through that one.

I’ve read SSN a few times before; I have the original 1996 paperback – sans front cover – and the 2000 reissue edition, so I only read it every so often. It’s not a terrible book, mind you, but it is the “forgotten Tom Clancy novel” that was part of a promotional push for a computer game project (Tom Clancy’s SSN) that the “Master of the Technothriller” was directly involved with in 1996.

So, that’s where I stand as far as my current reading list goes.

Speaking of reading lists and TBR stacks, even though I’m trying my best to not get carried away with buying “hard copy” books, I pre-ordered Peter Caddick-Adams’ Fire & Steel: The End of World War II in the West, the third and final book of the British military historian’s Steel trilogy about the Allied campaigns in Northwest Europe in 1944 and 1945.

Fire & Steel will be published in hardcover on July 1, so I have almost a month to get through at least two of my TBR pile titles before it gets here.