Then and Now

Mistress of the Art of Death has been on my Ipod since early March. Yes, ten months, languishing, being by-passed in favor of so many books. Why did I buy it? Why was I avoiding it? I think it must have been on sale. Audible sometimes puts books on sale and if they are under $10 and look at all interesting, I'll buy them. But why did I avoid reading this in favor lousy books like World Without End? I think I'd read something about it being silly, but after World, what could be silly?

Not this. I really enjoyed this book. It was written about a woman doctor who travels from Italy to Henry II's England to find out who has been killing children. Jews have been blamed and Henry likes the tax money he gets from the Jewish community too much to have them blamed for something they didn't do. You may recall how I hated World's inappropriate, anachronistic behavior. So, why would I like a book about a woman doctor in Medieval England? Totally wrong. But the book explains all this and the book holds together pretty well for its place in time. The author has a new book coming out tomorrow. What luck! I'll be looking for it on Audible.


Jeanne and I went to to see Charlie Wilson's War. I'd read this book a couple of years ago and was interested to see it on screen. First, it was fun to be out-and-about with Jeanne. She's been having a beginning of the year slow down at work, so we have decided to see all the movies we've missed. This was a good one to start with. It was a lot of fun to watch. And fodder for much discussion. First, the acting was good. The script was true to the book. You got a clear picture in the end that we did a miserable job with the wrap up to the Afghan war with Russia. The mess we left behind is now being ameliorated a bit by the man who wrote Three Cups of Tea.

The Afghans would have been in a mess if we hadn't become involved in supplying missles to the tribesmen. But we should do a better job of helping to repair what was damaged. That's what we did with the Marshall Plan after WWII. We realized then that one of the things that led to the war was leaving Germany devastated after WWI. George Marshall wanted to do better the second time around. It worked. If it had been done now, we would have sent in Halliburton, they would have become rich and the countries we were trying to help would have bombed us years ago. That's just my opinion. :)