My Reading Obsession

I know I’ve brought it up before, but there is that list of 1001 books you should read before you die, and I’d like to complete it. The thing is, I’m a pretty voracious reader, and when I look at that list, I’ve only read 5%.  I know this, because someone online made up a spreadsheet with all the books.  So you put in your age, and the books you’ve read, and it tells you how many books per year you’d have to read to finish all of them (if you live to the average age of course).  It also tells you the percentage you’ve finished.  5%?  Give me a break!!! I guess I only read non-worthwhile books!

So I know you are all on pins and needles about how many books I’d have to read per year to finish up said list.  Right?  Wait for it……31.  That’s it.  Gosh, I do that by April, during tax season, right? But the thing is, I’d really need to focus my reading and give up some of the stuff I read just for fun.

Like probably I should stop reading all the Jane Austen books every other year, and the Harry Potter 7 every year or so–I pick one up by accident and then can’t help devouring them all no matter how hard I try to stop myself!  I guess it’s better than cigarettes, right?

The other thing is, I don’t want to buy the 1001 books!  Jeez!  Last summer Chantel was going to the library and I wrote down 10 books from the list. And she came back with the very last one–everything else they either didn’t have or they were checked out.  So that doesn’t always work.  It’s going to be interesting I guess…

So it’s October (basically!) and I have 31 books to read. I’ve already read 2 this year, Mrs. Dalloway and Myra Breckenridge, but they are in the 5% so I guess I still have 13 to go. I’d better get to it!

George Washington was not immune to thoughts of hypocrisy as the Declaration of Independence became the document of our new country.    Letters show he felt that slaves should be free. Later, even more documentation exists to show that he felt slaves were an inefficient way to work plantations, and that profitability would  be better served with a paid workforce.  And yet at the time of his death, having ample opportunity, motive and belief, he still owned over 300 slaves.

Selling them would not work.  He refused to have families split apart, and the fact was that only 150 or so of the slaves could actually work and were worth money.  The others, children and the elderly, he felt bound to support.  Also, half of the slaves were a dower property of his wife’s, and she had no intention of selling. I’m sure many of hers were related to many of his, and so any effort to sell or free his would break families apart.

And he wouldn’t free them.  Despite the fact that he felt slavery was wrong, he refused to take some of his more valuable slaves with him when he served as President because slavery was not legal there, and if the slaves ran, they would be free.  In fact, even after his Presidency, he sent slave hunters after two slaves who had escaped him.  Although he knew the practice to be wrong, he still saw the slaves as his property and freeing them as a loss.

As President, Washington tried to stop the slavery issue from coming to the forefront for debate in Congress. Again, he knew it to be wrong, unconstitutional and immoral, and he knew that the country would likely profit from ending the practice, but he also felt that the country, the ‘United States’, needed time to meld before such a subject tore it apart.  He felt that in fifteen or  twenty years, it would be amicably settled. In this of course, he was wrong.

So here I think Washington’s actions and beliefs really tell a lot about him. He was a mix of idealism and realism, truth and falsehood, wanting to do right, but not if it cost him.  In short, he was like every man, some good, some evil, with endless possibilities for good and for bad.  What do we remember?  As a child my thoughts about George were based on falshood, the cherry tree being one of them. Is it wrong to only know the positive?  Yes, probably.  In 1984, the government has rewritten history. Is this so different?  Can children not see or learn that all men are not perfect?  One professor once asked a perfectly real question–should Huckleberry Finn be taught to high school students?  Can they see what Twain meant to show?  Or do they only see the mistreatment and humiliation of a man because of the color of his skin?  I’m not sure I’d trust most schoolteachers with teaching right and wrong. I guess its something you find out if you care to explore history.

So what’s next?  John Adams, Federalist (Democrat) to the extreme.  Wonder what I’ll find out next?

I’m also reading “My Heart Laid Bare” by Joyce Carol Oats and a horrible biography ‘The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine’.

One of the things that amazed me in reading about George Washington’s presidency was just how much the antagonism of the two party system was the same then as it is today.  Thomas Jefferson was a Republican–he was a very rich man with a lot of property and many slaves.  All through the Revolutionary War, and the process of building the government afterwards, he balked at federal taxation, control over the states, a standing military, and especially a federal banking system.  He held a high position under George Washington and back-stabbed the President every chance he got. It’s funny, because there is a map of the states at that time that looks quite a bit like the red and blue map that circulated during the Bush elections.

In my opinion, the media is part of the problem now. They love to exploit every little thing to get ratings.  They have a lot of nerve calling themselves news shows, really.  Anyway, I think the Republicans have benefited for years by touting out these moral issues to get less educated, religious people to follow them (okay, I feel some hits coming), when in reality their actual agenda features a lot more of what Jefferson was after–keeping what he had and making more on the backs of the poor and his slaves.  Democrats on the other hand are complete wimps.  Jeez!  Get a backbone.  And they really, really need to stop being so much like the Republicans, making all the little people believe that they will help them in their day to day life.  They won’t!  This is politics people!

The only way to get us out of the sinkhole of debt and spiraling government is for someone to say, “To fix this mess, I am going to raise taxes and lower benefits.”  Honestly.  With Medicare and Social Security set to take over the entire federal budget within ten years, that’s how it would have to be to continue on in this way. And would that person be elected?  Not a chance. One of my college professors was the Chairman of the FAASB, which basically audits the accounting of the federal government, parts of which never get a clean opinion.  He was terrified at the financial position of the government right now, and showed us how much worse it is going to be–soon. Not in 50 years, in the next few years. And that was after the bailout but before the recovery act.  It’s a mess, I tell you, a mess.  Of course you knew that, and if you didn’t go back under your rock.  The interesting thing this book brought to me was that this has been happening since the very beginning of our country’s political process.

Washington wanted a tax, a banking system, and an army ready to defend the country (since Britain kept troops poised on the border with Canada, it wasn’t a bad idea).  However, there were others in the Democratic party who wanted a standing army to march through the states and force the  Republicans to do things how they wanted.  George might have been a moderate, but all those around him were fighting nastily, with rumor and innuendo just as they do now.  Even when he was general and not president he dealt with it.  He basically sacrificed years of good health and time away from his own interests and was second guessed and maligned at ever turn.

I guess my point is, for us newbies to the game, it’s been played this way forever, and it probably always will be.

One more post on George tomorrow, because I don’t think I can skip over something important;  slavery.

Yes, I’m still reading, and believe it or not, I am going to focus more time here.  A friend recently told me that he checks my blog every day, even though i never write anymore, so I guess I’d better reward his loyalty and get back to work.  Believe it or not, there is a lot to say, right?  Right!

My daughter Chantel had this idea to read a biography about all the presidents in order. To me, that’ s a hard thing to do. I love biographies, but the presidents, at least the more famous ones, all have multiple biographies with stories and personalities that conflict, and it’s hard to decide what to read.  Finally I just picked one on George Washington and decided I’d read it as fact/opinion and take it with a grain of salt.   Then Chantel started college and decided she did not have the time to read with me. I guess I’ll save the books for her later. 

The book I chose was ‘ His Excellency: George Washington’ ‘ by Joseph J. Ellis.   While George Washington was an interesting historical figure, my interest was more in the history that was part of his story.  The man had some very good traits, showcased especially in his refusal to take over the country after the war for independence was won.  Of all the men in history in his position, he was the only one to really live out the ideal, and step back from becoming a King.  However, there is no doubt some of his successes were due to reasons other than ingenuity or actions.  The fact that he married the richest woman in America had as much to do with him leading revolutionary forces and becoming President as did his failures in the French and Indian wars, which somehow started an amazing rise in the army.

Tonight I’ll cover the first thing of interest to me; the fact that we won our independence with sheer luck. I simply cannot believe that the war ended the way it did!  We were outclassed, outmanned, outmaneuvered, and out every thing else as well.  I remember being taught about how our troops had no shoes and warm clothes, but now I realize why.  The independent states had no intention of being taxed by a federal government that might come to have any of the powers the British government had, and even less intention of actually sending men to serve long term in the war.  So Washington had no money to build an army, and every time his troops became trained at all, they left and went home to be replaced by men with no experience, who knew they too would leave after a couple of years or less.  Then there was Washington himself, who chose battles wrongly, stood his ground when he shouldn’t’ have, depended on the French when he shouldn’t have, and had leaders in his army that didn’t do what he commanded and even those that betrayed him.  I mean, it’s a darn good thing the British didn’t fight one more fight or we’d still be colonies!  It’s incredible, really.  This was very fun to read.

The war went on and on too.  For eight years he did nothing but battle.  It had to be draining, depressing, and demoralizing, and yet he continued on.  His own home, plantations and land were in danger, but he left them for all that time.  It just seems like a huge sacrifice. And when it was over, and so many people were calling for him to step in and rule the country he went home, where he’d wanted to be for years.

Well, there is more to say…but it’s getting late and I’m tired, so I think it’s time to get in bed.  Maybe K will get the hint and turn off that show!