Reading for Me

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately. That’s an understatement if there ever was one! I’ve been “reading” the same novel — The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson — for over a month. The novel is not long. I just haven’t been able to read. I’ve continued to go through the motions and read for about 20 minutes most days, but the activity has been uninspired and unproductive. What’s worse? I have another book on my iPad that I simply cannot finish. This is not a good thing for my yearly reading goal.

If I’m honest, I’ve been dealing with depression again for the past 6 weeks or so. Nothing has really triggered anything and I am certainly not in such a dark place that I need professional help (yet). I’m just sad, lethargic, and unmotivated. With warmer weather, I am beginning to feel better and at a place where I can actually address the sadness and make moves to change my emotional state when I catch myself getting dark. One of my ways to make sure that I am taking care of myself emotionally is to spend some time pampering myself. So, when I left the office on Friday afternoon, I exited the work email on my phone and decided I would check it once each day. If something really important came up, my colleagues have other ways of getting in touch with me. I scheduled a massage for Saturday afternoon and paired it with a trip to the bookstore and a favorite restaurant. For one day, my only concern was my well-being.

As I went into the bookstore, I didn’t feel the draw to fiction. That’s the normal stuff of my reading life and I needed a change. I began to wander the non-fiction stacks, but didn’t find much I wanted to dive into. This was not the time to explore secrets to happiness or finding purpose for my life. I wanted something that felt real, but that didn’t require me to examine myself. That comes later….

That’s when I stumbled (literally) into the History section and found myself intrigued by all of the Presidential works. Some that immediately caught my eye were massive tomes that I wasn’t ready for. Those would have been a huge commitment. As I was walking away, I noticed a couple of familiar figures on the cover of a book that did not look like an intimidating read at all. I’ve always been fascinated with the Nixon presidency and especially its ending due to the Watergate scandal. Tom Brokaw was my childhood image of the Nightly News. He was someone I trusted to explore the issue with a journalist’s keen eye while keeping his personal opinions out of the dialogue. I was pleased to find that one of my expectations held true.

The Fall of Richard Nixon was a fascinating, fast read. I plowed through the entire work in less than 24 hours (something I rarely do) and enjoyed exploring the situation from Brokaw’s first-hand perspective as a member of the White House press corps during the Nixon administration. The work was filled with insight, humor, and compassion for members of the Nixon White House. While Watergate is still a massive story that I am certain I have not fully unpacked, I feel as though I have a better handle on how America found itself in such a troublesome time within her highest office.

What I found unfortunate in Brokaw’s work were the numerous statements about the Trump administration that were couched within the Nixon story. Some of these were genuinely insightful and worthy of comparison. (Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you lean, no one has ever claimed that either Nixon or Trump were saints.) However, when Brokaw took off on a tangent that stretched for several pages about an article that he discovered in the New York Times — under the fold — while exploring the headlines about Nixon in the Fall of 1973, it became obvious that Brokaw wanted to slander the sitting President (at the time of the book’s publication) at any cost. Brokaw’s exploration of charges against Trump Management Corporation for discrimination against blacks in apartment rentals had no other segue way to the Nixon story. Brokaw returns to the struggles in the Middle East and the resulting oil embargo as though nothing had interrupted the conversation at all. While this was the lengthiest anti-Trump passage, the assaults were peppered throughout the work. If that was the goal, write an exposé on Donald Trump. Don’t hide it within another work about a different President in a different era unless you are at least going to make a connection between the two stories. I must admit that I now know that my trust in Brokaw’s unbiased journalistic integrity was based in naiveté.

What’s on the reading plan next for me? I am going to try to get back into The Kindest Lie this week and see if I can finish it up. If that doesn’t seem to take, I also picked up Becoming by Michelle Obama as another non-fiction option. Here’s hoping that I am coming out of the reading slump.