Shallow Thinker

It’s been my intention for sometime to create a page on this site to discuss the books that I’ve read and to solicit input for future books. The intent for doing a page on the site was so that it doesn’t become lost in the posts and random readers can give suggestions. But, I’ve hit two major problems:

(1) I haven’t gotten far on putting the page together. Usually actually creating the page is helpful when trying to create a page.

(2) I don’t read much. Again, this is problematic when trying to get some reading done.

I went through a spurt around the end of last year where I did a pretty good bit of reading. Our current interim pastor let me borrow a few books that were not only well-written, but were very helpful in helping me wade through some of the murkiness in my mind. I enjoyed these books more because they helped me to refine my thought process instead of defining exactly what my thoughts should be.

So even though my reading have slowed down, they still move. I’ve always enjoyed the stories of history (as opposed to all the dates that were taught in school), but I’ve never really had a method for learning more. And to be honest, my generation is removed a bit from the World Wars, so we don’t really have that point-of-reference that leads older generations to dig and search for the stories behind the dates.

My in-laws gave me Flags of Our Fathers for Christmas. I’ve only gotten a few chapters into it, but I do like what the writer has done. He has spent a good portion of his adult life researching the lives of the six marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. (The picture only looks like four, but if you know where to look, you can see the other two.) His desire to dig comes from the fact that his father was one of the six, yet he rarely mentioned the event. The book interweaves details of that battle with accounts of the how those six boys (most were younger than I am now) got to where they were.

When I finish this book, I probably won’t know many more dates than what I know now. And, I probably will have added only a few names into my memory bank. But what I will have is a much deeper appreciation for six men that have been frozen in time by a photograph. That is the way history should be taught.