Trying to be social...

...sometimes involves reconsidering your TBR list. When recently asked what I was reading, I blithely mentioned To Be A Military Sniper (by Gregory Mast and Hans Halberstadt), Sniper (by Adrian Gilbert) and Sniper: A History of the U.S. Marksman (by Martin Pegler). The person asking me clapped her hands over her ears and went "la la la la la!" to avoid further discussion. And so it was brought to my attention that sometimes research doesn't make the best chit-chat, and I resolved that I should work on that. (But, jeez, it wasn't like I was going on about plague or sucking chest wounds or anything.)

While I'm working, I tend to stay away from crime fiction, so I quickly tore through David Sedaris's When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles, and J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific. It then occurred to me that in another chat about books, it might be hard to discuss Sedaris's morbid and obsessive humor (pet spiders, talking toilets, and lung disease, anyone?) or to explain that Troost's book is not so much about cannibals or sex (well, maybe a bit), but about his years on the island in the Republic of Kiribati (which, while very funny as a clash-of-cultures observation, was also a sad comment on the state of small countries in an industrialized world). And not everyone digs dragons or fantasy or alternative histories (I'm a big fan of Temeraire and like some alternative history, but am allergic to unicorns).

So take your pick of objectionable reading matter; some days, you just can't win for trying.

(And for anyone interested, so far, the books on snipers I've tackled so far are well-written, by folks who know the field, are packed with details that correct popular misconceptions. A chacun son gout.)