Hiatus, enforced.

So, it has been quite a long time since I posted anything. This is not because I haven't been reading. This is because I was busy graduating, stressing out, traveling, stressing out and then finding a job.

Books, I think I have already mentioned here somewhere, are glorious means of escape for me. When I am seriously stressed out, I read and read and read and read. Losing myself in someone else's troubles (mystery, memoir, general fiction), the extraordinary (science fiction, science, memoir again, history), the "you can't make this stuff up" (history...j'adore) helps iron out my soulful wrinkles. Lately, history has been my go-to wrinkle relaxer.

I read this really great book a couple of months ago called Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. It is the story of Theodore Roosevelt's childhood up to the point where he becomes, well, TR; the guy we remember as a fearless and vibrant personality with charisma to spare. McCullough only takes us up to the point when Thee (isn't that a wonderful nickname?) begins to make a name for himself in local and state politics. The thing about this book isn't the wonderful prose (oh, it's there) or the riveting examination of 19th century politics (as down and dirty as ever), but the ridiculously enchanting and wistful look into a society that no longer exists. Sure, that society is super privileged and terribly exclusive, but under McCullough's deft pen it emerges as a magical way of life that we ought to mourn for being so far gone. Edith Wharton, one of my very favourite authors, wrote very honestly about how oppressive and judgmental turn of the century high society was, and it would be a huge mistake not to recognise that the world in which Theodore Roosevelt was reared was completely and cunningly manufactured for prime enjoyment. McCullough wisely reminds us of this even as he paints a long-gone world that anyone would want to experience. It's like reading a book in sepia.