drspecial

I try to only read one book at a time. My general reading policy is to alternate between a heavy book, usually history, and then a fun novel. I'm not a fast reader by any means; I've been slogging through The Discoverers by Daniel Borstin for months. It's about humanity's progress in time-keeping, navigation, astrology to astronomy, anatomy, science in general, and much more. Quite grand, with a dry wit that is hardly noticeable unless you look for it. As a result, it's heavy and slow, but thoroughly interesting.
I've got a large backlog of books in a stack yet to be read. I try to resist the temptation of the library, where there are far too many more books to distract me from from my stack.
Well, yesterday I went anyways -- naughty naughty -- since Kate had to return a few books. (She reads fast.) There I stumbled upon Taft 2012: A Novel, a political satire about President William Taft mysteriously returning to America in the fall of 2011. I've been turning pages non-stop. It starts out a little slow, with some juvenile fat jokes. But once you get twenty pages in, it picks up quite nicely.
This was strategically released for the present election year, and does a great job of turning the issues upside-down. Members of the FOP all clamor for their lost days of old, when common sense ruled, eagerly anticipating his return to politics. Of course the Republican Party of the early 20th Century was the party of progress (They here still the party of Lincoln, opposed to good old boys club, the Southern Democrats. Goldwater fixed that decades later.), so he breaks from their expectations in amusing ways. He speaks of the world with great old-fashioned language, and we feel plenty of pathos too. Taft 2012 is funny, original, and with just enough depth to make it worthy of your attention.