Saturday, October 29, 2011

A Little Bit Down

For some reason I can't quite get hold of, my reading has been distinctly skittish of late. From maintaining a disciplined approach to having just a couple of books on the go I've been jumping haphazardly from tome to tome with just one big read to hold the whole thing together - and it's Kershaw's biography of der Fuhrer that's been playing that role of late.

Adding to my mild sense of dissatisfaction is the fact that I'm not exactly enjoying Kershaw's magnum opus. Oh, it's a fine work and extremely gripping with some powerful insights. The problem is, I'm finding it casts a bit of a pall on life in general. This is extreme stuff and tends to colour one's views of just about everything. The sense of low-lying anger at the culture that let it all happen is vaguely debilitating - and there's a worrying feeling attendant upon that of being somehow unfair to the participants and over-judgemental. In the same situation would I have done any better?

God, I hope so.

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