Life is strange, and my job is like the mafia, just when you think that you're out, they pull you back in. I have been working for about a month now and I have actually been a lot happier since. I have had several meetings with my boss and have - I think - impressed upon him the absolute necessity of having more staff in my old department (that being the condition whereby I would consider going back). I am anticipating a fresh round of negotiations to begin sometime in the next couple of weeks.
I realize that I have let my blog slide for a while; I have been doing some heavy reading. I picked up Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, both by Robert Fisk (combined total of about 2000 pages of fine print). I also picked up a book titled The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill. The latter is a very good, if occasionally brutal story, but I highly recommend it.
These books are a part of my on-going quest, I suppose, to learn about the increasingly chaotic world that I seem to be living in. I try to get as complete a picture of the world as I can and then modify my worldview to fit the facts that I have been able to acquire - needless to say, my worldview changes with every passing day. I don't doubt that this desire to see the world through the eyes of others has left me with a slightly skewed view of it, but to study the world is to study its history not its present, so I try to get the best histories that I can, and go from there.
Anyways, it's late, I'm tired, and I have at least another 1300 pages to get through.
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1 comment:
I'm more of a fiction person myself, with a preference for mysteries. :) Ocassionally, I'll pick up something more substantial though.
The most interesting non-fiction book I've read is easily "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. It's a bit heavy on the science for the typical layman, but the politics and history behind the project are facinating. It includes graphic photos of the devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki which seem so unreal that they are unforgettable. It took me the better part of a year to get through this book though, because one can only digest so much material at one time.
I also quite enjoyed "Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC" which follows the adventures of several Doctors from the Center for Disease Control and their battles against the Ebola virus. This one took me less than a week to whip through.
If you'd like to borrow either of them, let me know. :)
Christine B.
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