yeah the question was uh what kind of books do you read for entertainment uh
uh i guess
oh i just read for escape well i mean it's
okay with two little kids i can understand that
yes it's that's simple i read to escape and i don't read any Parents magazines either so
oh
what uh what kind of
well i just finished just i just finished one last night a great book
it it's very a typical for my reading though but a great book one called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
hum
and it's uh God i don't know if i would call it
a collection of Vietnam war stories or if i'd call it a collection of Vietnam love stories
oh
strange book beautifully written
um-hum
just beautifully written
by uh somebody who was there or
yeah a guy who was there as a uh foot soldier so he considered himself to be you know a a true Vietnam soldier
um-hum
yeah well any of the guys that were ground yes yeah i can imagine
yeah so what's the latest one you've read
yeah well i tell you what i'm a kind of uh a history
nut i'm trying to think back now i read an awful lot of uh
periodicals and uh you know almost what you call reference book and uh the last uh i'm embarrassed to say the last you know honest to gosh cover to cover book that i read i cannot
uh-huh
right offhand i tried to read uh one of the the Michener uh Lone Star or the the Texas History Book
i have never been able to make it through any of Michener's work
oh well i've had similar problems it does tend to to
have you are you a Civil War buff at all
yeah as a matter of fact yeah
because i finished one
i think this is like two years ago
and somebody had given me one of these dinky do crappy women's novels set in the Civil War John Jakes one and the novel didn't do that much for me but boy the period of time was fascinating
yeah
uh-huh
so i then read
was it Battle Cry of Freedom
uh-huh
yeah i think it was Battle of Freedom it's kind of like a historical compendium
yeah
of the Civil War and it's not a story of the Civil War it's a story of all the politics and uh lobbying and just basically state by state events that led
uh-huh
to of the events that brought about the Civil War and it's fascinating because i had always you know have been raised on this you know Emancimation Proclamation with the Civil War
uh-huh there was a lot more to it than that weren't there
there was a lot more to it than that as a matter of fact that was a very minor part that kind of become like an afterthought
yeah well it was a political move it was made to placate some of the northern support but not completely alienate all the southern
oh yeah
support because you know it was uh if you read it it only emancipated those who were in
areas uh in rebellion against the United States all the other areas which would i think at that time would have included West Virginia and
oh may have been Kentucky a few states you know that were not part of the South but still had slaves they didn't emancipate them
um-hum
well you know what else really surprised me now i'm married to a native Texan and i'm not
um-hum
uh
i've got the same problem
yeah i'm glad you put it that way and i have two native Texan children too my husband is always you know talked about Texas being a uh rebel state and oh my God all this Civil War pride
yeah
i kept waiting for where's some reference to this God damn State of Texas and the role that they played either leading up to or in the Civil War they might as well have not even
isn't isn't much there is there
been there you know they weren't a state and the only the only way that they had any part in it was after worth as to you know who's going to be going there and i keep telling my husband that and he keeps saying oh no i thought okay
they supplied some uh you know they were some groups
uh the Vicksburg if you ever get a chance to go over to Vicksburg the battleground at Vicksburg
uh there's an area there where there was uh some Texas uh
groups and they had an interesting time there
oh i'll bet they did
and down there at Sabine Pass uh i can't think of the guy's name but he held off the
you know just he and a handful of guys managed to hold off the whole Union
navy for a while from coming up the Sabine River which was of no consequence but still is an interesting story
well you know why they actually held them off
none of the Yankees wanted to listen to their kind of luted grammar
that could be it could be it
now you didn't hear me say that outside of um
and then the last Civil War battle was fought at Val Verde you know over there on the Texas border you had a lot of
of groups heading for Mexico and they were cut off at the pass more or less at Eagle Pass
and they didn't get across the river there so they're the last and that was actually after the war was over but it was the last
yeah
organized battle between the two units was in Texas so
yeah Texas participation in the Civil War was uh minor at uh
boy don't tell that to a native Texan though i mean my God they fought and won the whole thing
at best yeah
yeah well my wife's from Galveston so
ooh
yeah Well i'm from New Mexico so you know i was
that's a beautiful state that's a beautiful state see i was raised in the Midwest which you know hell we didn't even you know
um-hum
we didn't even know where the Mason Dixon Line was and besides you know if corn didn't grow there it didn't matter
it sounds like Iowa or something
Iowa and Nebraska
um-hum
yep and then i had probably lived the last eleven years in Massachusetts so you know what does that make me an honorary Yankee or
hum
yeah on yeah
God knows what
oh well my sister's living in Illinois right now so
well then she's going to come out well rounded but outside of those kind of things you know the other thing that i've really gotten into reading
yeah
i think this is because the kids are getting to me
um-hum
is science fiction
i've always kind of enjoyed it i i used to read a lot more than i do now
well i've gone to the point where my husband my husband travels i get out like you know two or three books
um-hum
and i i'm trying to think of
oh Isaac Asimov Robot series
yeah
i mean i think i've read all four of them and i understand that there's a fifth in the last six weeks he's been on the road a lot
um
i just turned around and looked at my brief at my briefcase my uh bookcase up here and i see Armageddon up there
and uh the Shadow of Blooming Grove
and Two Thousand and Ten and Grant Takes Command and The War in the Year oh Space gee that was the one i was trying to wade through was Space James Michener
didn't get very far on that
you know i think i read Hawaii when i was about ten years old or so which is about the developmental level that you know you need to be at to read those things and i still even then i was so so disgusted with it i i tried to read
yeah
yeah
i don't remember which other one it was whatever one it was it was such a blockbuster seller
yeah
and i just i got about like a hundred pages through it and realized i had like a thousand more i thought i can't do this
yeah it really the the books are kind of uh imposing to say the least
yeah
no let's see here's one called Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of New Mexico now not too many people have read that one i don't think
no
and there's The History of Yoakum County Texas there
is that a big thick book
i've got uh
yeah and i've got yeah and i've got a History of Kingsley Iowa
what the what the hell for why Kingsley Iowa
well because that's where my folks all came from and they had a centennial here awhile back
oh okay
i read the Grant Takes Command that was pretty good
well
that was part of that trilogy that uh Bruce Canton did
now that's one
that's one i don't know see i had never really been into science fiction that much until uh
somebody gave me Mist of Avalon probably about five or six years ago i don't know if i'd call it science fiction or fantasy
yeah
sometimes it's awful hard some of those get very philosophical they can be in any setting
they just happen to put them in a futuristic setting you know the
well i loved that novel and then somebody said oh God this would have been even long ago because i was in Boston and it was raining all night and i had a hole in my roof and i was waiting for the whole house to collapse and uh i was reading Dune
oh
which seeming rather ironic
yeah
and i read the whole damn book while i was home hauling out you know like ten gallon buckets of of water and waiting for the roof to collapse and reading about these guys wearing their little Freeman Steel suits and
uh-huh you're reading Dune
i think that's probably my favorite of of any piece of science fiction that i've ever read and the movie was awful oh yes it was just terrible
that was a movie too wasn't it
was it
yeah i'd i didn't see it but uh
yeah
it was it was beyond
Patrick Stewart was in that i guess the guy that's on the new Star Trek series was in that thing uh
i don't know i just remember Sting was in it
oh really
yeah and if you were trying to follow any type of uh
uh
plot it it total even having read the book and i've read that book probably three times watching that movie i couldn't figure out what they were talking about
um-hum
couldn't
at all
yeah
i was real disappointed in that well i'll tell you another good book do you like scary things
um well well some history books are pretty scary but yeah
have you
that's true have you read The Silence of the Lambs
no somebody who saw the movie here the other day told me it was the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen they didn't sleep all night
ooh
well see i'm i'm debating whether i want to go see the movie after having read the book i mean the book is is chilling just chilling
yeah
i have no idea i don't have the foggiest notion what it is about
then i won't tell you
okay yeah but
it's just that if you're ever ever really want to just be scared out of your wits
um-hum that's the one
that's the one yes
even better than Jaws and some of that
yes because the character the the character that is so horrible is another human being And you're just drawn into his
his horror of him that you begin to kind of like him
yeah
oh
that i mean
a a Freddy Kruger type huh
no no This guy's smart and he's suave and he's all the characteristics all the characteristics yeah all the characteristics
oh the worst kind yeah yeah
