Reading Matters

Halfway through Edvard Radzinksy's Stalin, and it's a day overdue. Library policy is not to renew overdue books, so now it's going to be months before I find out how The Boss responded to all of Bukharin's doomed pleas for clemency from his prison cell. Bugger!

In view of certain snippy comments I've had about previous books read, I've decided that in future I'm sticking to science fiction, fantasy or, failing those options, the children's section. I've already noticed a couple of promising entries in the library's on-line catalogue; Harry Potter in the Garden of Delights and Where's Wally's Willy? Some light reading will make a pleasant change. So will being able to return books during library opening hours, rather than sneaking round at night to drop them through the after hours return slot, so that you can pretend the damage to the bindings was caused by all the other books that got dumped in on top of your borrowings.

Meanwhile, for those who might be interested in whether Hannah Arendt's treatment of Rudolph Kastner in Eichmann in Jerusalem was fair, there's this on-line article which gives the most balanced account of the "Kastner Trial" I could google up. I'd write more, but I'm not in a particularly Den Bestean mood right now.