Book 039
It might not be the right time of year for a book titled Rest Ye Merry but who cares, right? It really is NOT a Christmas story. It is a mystery that happens to be set at Christmas time at an agricultural college in New England. This is the first book in Charlotte MacLeod's Peter Shandy series of mysteries. It is a bit over-the-top in some ways but it is this exaggeration that gives the book (and subsequent books in the series that I have listened to so far) their flavor and delightfulness.
Professor Shandy has
been pestered for years to participate in the college's Winter Festival by
decorating his house. This year he
decides to give in -- in a big way. He
hires some guys to do the job and they do a bang up job of installing far too
many lights and too loud music. Shandy
heads out and leaves his house to disturb the neighbors while he is far away
from the noise and nuisance of the event.
He comes home sooner than he had planned and discovers a body behind his
sofa ...
Book 040
Now, to get as far
from fanciful tales set in New England in the 1970s as possible -- well, just a
change of tone, for sure. From fanciful
to ... well, non-fiction that should have been incredibly disturbing. I'm not sure why I wasn't more disturbed than
I was -- maybe it is the tone of the writing.
But Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields,
by Wendy Lower, should have infuriated me.
It didn't. I tended to find
myself analyzing certain aspects of the information instead. In many ways the information is disturbing --
especially with how the women got away with their behaviors at war's end. Yet, some of the information I found myself
analyzing was concerning the cultural climate in German under Hitler and his
Nazis -- and how the author did not use this information to answer her own
questions of "how can women do these things?" This book, in my estimation, shows how a
population that believes what it is told or is too afraid to not pretend it
believes everything it is told can do anything -- good or bad.
If it is true that
Germans truly believed what they were told in the 30s and 40s, then there is an
impact to this day on the psyche of the people.
Also, it is notable to see that Hitler did not make military maneuvers
to conquer Europe until the "first" Hitler Youth were old enough to
serve in the military ... he was willing to bide his time to get what he
wanted; there was a "bigger"
plan in place ...
**shudder**
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