The Mind Eclectic

It seemed like a good time to again take inventory of the books on my night stand (that is, the books I’m currently in the middle of reading). I had to laugh. This could be one of the most multifarious assortments of books for one person to be reading at the same time ever.

Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier


I mean! Could any stack of books be more unlike?

The Voyage of the Beagle is for Classics Club. So far I am pleasantly surprised, although it doesn’t seem to hurt to do some skimming. It’s essentially a travelogue of an early nineteenth century South American sea voyage by an enthusiastic amateur naturalist who colorfully describes everything from the cowboy Gaucho life to octopi to rocky salt caches. I am keeping my humongous atlas and magnifying glass handy so I can see where he is and pick up a little much-needed geography knowledge on this voyage. (Next is Darwin’s On the Origin of Species which I am not real excited about—much as many people insist on still taking his theory as fact, it’s been disproved by the lack of evidence in our now vast fossil record, new technology-based proofs disputing the notion of  a magma-centered earth and deep time, and the discovery of DNA, to name just a few of the many problems. I think Darwin's theory has been and is still used pretty much as an excuse not to believe in God, and yet you need great amounts of blind faith these days to believe in the debunked theory of evolution!)

My kids, grandkids, and I are reading Cleary books this year so I’m starting with the Ramonas. Very funny and cute so far.

The other day I watched the docu-movie Experimenters on Netflix. It was so fascinating I immediately ordered Milgram’s book, Obedience to Authority, which is also fascinating and fits right in with my views. His post-WWII study, although I believe shockingly unethical (no pun intended--they use electric shocks) showed that yes indeed, man is fallen, prone to do the wrong thing, morally lazy, eager to sluff off responsibility for moral and religious beliefs onto any sort of authority-type-looking or acting figure. Sad but true. We have to admit this fact or we won’t strive to overcome it.

With all this assigned and technical reading, I have to read some Agatha Christie. I recently discovered her for myself and can't get enough. She’s always good for some mentally stimulating R&R. And I like anything by Du Maurier. By the way, the short story "The Birds" is way better than the Hitchcock film made from it ( and I usually love Hitchcock movies).

Okay, I have to admit I am stagnated somewhere about a third of the way through Ivanhoe. But I’m determined to finish it just because I'm sorry I've never read it, so there it sits in prime real estate on my night stand.

Oh but there's more. Underneath the above, are two bright green books. One is the biography of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch I’ve been wanting to read. (I've read all of Flannery's stories over and over.) The other is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley recommended by one of my daughters.

Am I lucky or what? Who could ask for a more varied, interesting, and active internal intellectual life?