I wrapped up The Fifties this morning. I would say that it wasn't what I expected, but I didn't really have much of an expectation when I picked it up on impulse. (Ironically, it's on sale right now too.) I assumed that there would be some kind of narrative throughout the book, but it's just a bunch of loosely related chapters. There isn't much in the way of analysis or discussion (outside of the choice of which topics and people to write about). We're kind of left to draw our own conclusions, but the leaps required to make these conclusions are minor at best. TV changed the way we make decisions and shaped opinion. Presidential politics, Civil Rights, advertising, entertainment, sports, all of these things were altered by the wiring of the nation. I guess that was the narrative. The nation got smaller in the fifties. A national conscience emerged. Everyone could have an opinion on events taking place well outside of their community. You could experience more of the world from your living room. Well, you could get a sense of the experience. TV provides a produced view of an event. You see what the people running the cameras want you to see. Just like our social media feeds show us what the people we follow want us to see. We build opinions with selected pieces of reality. We feel like we know everything and proclaim our expertise. We really know so little. We're ignorant about so many things. That's a timeless property of living. It's just as true now as it was 60 years ago.
Books like The Fifties perpetuate the idea that we know what's going on all the time. We can read about McDonald's and Russia and Martin Luther King and know how things turned out. We can start with something that emerged as significant and trace it back to some inauspicious beginning. We can tell ourselves that we see wisdom and foresight where there may just have been luck or good fortune. We can cast the heroes and the villains based on shifts in social norms. Events seem inevitable when looked at in hindsight. We read about the things that turned out well. We don't hear about the ventures that failed or aborted social movements. We tell ourselves a story based on a selective culling of the facts. We tell the story that helps the world make sense. We find the neat and tidy explanations buried in the ambiguous and noisy reality of life.
So The Fifties was an adequate book. It was a competent collection of facts told with a compelling style. It's also rather conventional and seeks easy answers to difficult questions. I read it despite feeling like it was a book that I would just pass over again and again. It's in my past. The timing of my finishing this book is nice. It's only January 2 and I already have 1 book completed for 2018, a several hundred page book at that. I'm going for 30 books again this year so that leaves me with 29 to go. For the year anyway. Only 158 to go for Book Shelf Zero (not bad considering that I was looking at 180 at this point last year.)
On to what's next. I find myself once again finishing a book without being well advanced in another book (aside from Ulysses, which I may or may not resume). So many options! I like to have both an ebook and a print book going at the same time so I really have two choices to make. I'm pretty sure my print selection will be the next Flashman book. I'm up to number 8, Flashman and the Dragon. They're fun and pretty quick reads. I've been working through some ponderous stuff recently so something pleasing to read will be a good way to start 2018. As for my next ebook, I'm leaning towards quickly knocking out Getting to Yes With Yourself. This is another one of my impulse Deal of the Day purchases. It sounded like a good book at the time, but I was less than enthralled after reading a few pages. I'm at a point where I can just swallow my feelings on the book and just get through it. It's not very long so it could be a way to build some momentum and make some room for something more involved. I have the Alexandria Quartet as a single ebook. That's four books in one. I could read one, move on to something else, come back, and repeat until finished. I just don't want to start something else overly long after just finishing an 800 plus bag behemoth via the Kindle app.
I'm free to buy books again, but I don't want to get something just for the sake of getting something. I'm sure the urge to acquire some new material will get the better of me soon. I'm just trying to decide if I should get something that I can read quickly or find something with a little more heft.
No comments:
Post a Comment