Now for something a little more serious.

Though it strays from the general categories of this blog, I do feel compelled to tuck something serious in here every now and again. My head is actually not full of this fun stuff all day (that would be boring in the end, wouldn't it?)

I was visiting a local library yesterday and displayed staff picks for good reads led me to pick this one up. I'm 54 pages into it and so far so good. For some reason I have a weird, completely out of place (for me, anyway) mild fascination with military history. Can't say why, though I suspect it's part of my nascent fascination with history in general.

History, a subject I cared very little for until about a year ago. Until the History Channel forced me to confront the fact that the world is very large, very complicated, and has been around a very long time.

So much still to learn. I guess you could read nothing but history for the rest of your life and still have books left untouched as you breathe your last. This is intriguing to me.

The last book I read about history was Norman Cantor's Inventing The Middle Ages, published to acclaim in 1993. A dense book, it demanded far more background knowledge about Europe than I knew then (or will probably ever know), but it was cool all the same.

I don't feel dumb when I read books that are above me. I feel spunky for trying. You know, that old "reach for the stars" thing?