Finally, a book for slow reading

I haven't posted for a while because I'm feeling slightly guilty about how long it's taking me to read 1968: the Year that Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky which is about the wave of civil rights and political activism that happened then apparently everywhere except Australia. My Beloved was besotted by Kurlansky's previous book called Cod (the fish that rocked the workd for centuries until the invention of trawling caused the fisheries to collapse throwing Newfoundland fishermen out of work) and begged me to buy 1968 for him when it first came out.

Alas, he read the first chapter, declared it boring and then put it next to the bed for about six months until it was relegated to a bookshelf.

I picked it up last week, read the first chapter and thought it was going to be a month by month account of a period I know very little about and sort of like a digest of all the newspapers. This would have been fun because I love newspapers. I get very anxious if I miss the news as if countries have no right to start civil wars when I'm not paying attention. But it isn't like that. After that scene setting about the first few weeks of January in Paris, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the US, it's structured more thematically and gosh even talks about things that happened before 1968. Like the Cuban revolution and stuff.

It's one of those books that explains things that have been that way all my life so I'm feeling very ignorant for not realising them. Things like before the six day war they didn't use the word 'Palestinian' but talked about Arabs. And what 'flower power' meant. And what the Black Panthers were. And, this is embarrassing, Eugene Macarthy who ran for president in 1968 is not the same guy who persecuted communists in the 1950s (and his name was Joseph). And that until then television wasn't everywhere so people didn't get to see battles the day after they happened in their living room.

So my mind is expanding but it's a very slow read.