Since the term started and we started having in person services again (that are once again suspended) I haven’t had a lot of time or concentration for reading. I’ve been devouring Anne Hillerman’s Navajo series and loving them and Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series, so fun. Non-fiction though has been tougher.
I did however read a book written in small but meaty bits: Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. It’s hard not to feel like this is a time when tyranny and autocracy threaten. Snyder, who is a historian focussing on the period of Stalin and Hitler in Europe wrote this small book to try to help people interpret the times we are living in.
Some of the lessons focus on what we would think of as aspects of political life: don’t obey in advance, believe in truth, remember professional ethics… Others are things we might be less inclined to see as political: establish a private life, make eye contact and small talk, contribute to good causes…
I want to read it again – I’ve become more alert to certain things happening since reading it but suspect there is more I could be paying attention to.
60 Before 60 