Reading About History

I spent most of the weekend under the weather, and I still felt that way when I woke up this morning — congested, scratchy-throated, tired, generally miserable. So I called in sick and also postponed an interview with the New Jersey attorney general’s office that was supposed to be this afternoon. I’ve moved the interview to Wednesday.

I wound up having an incredibly pleasant day — essentially, I’ve stayed in bed all day, reading Battle Cry of Freedom. After two days I’m up to page 406 out of 856, which I think is pretty amazing. And it’s renewed my interest in American history. Assorted history books are sitting on my bookcases, some from my college courses and some that I bought at one time or another on impulse; there are a few of them that I’d love to read after I finish this one, including (don’t laugh) The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union, and David Herbert Donald’s well-received biography, Lincoln, which was published in 1995. I also have this desire to read John Jakes’ North and South trilogy, a three-volume epic of historical fiction that came out, I think, twenty years ago, as well as assorted other books.

That’s pretty much the way my mind works: I get overly enthusiastic about eight million things at once, and I want to read everything now before I lose interest. It’s strange how this great salivating enthusiam for certain things is balanced by a great anxiety that my life is a waste and that time is about to end. Or are they connected? I don’t know.

All I know is that no therapist I’ve met has ever thought that I need Prozac. I guess that’s a good sign.