I usually have several books going at once: history, mystery, thriller, short stories, how-to, humor, old favorite.  It’s good to have several strings to my need-to-read bow so I always have something at hand to suit my mood.  A book, usually a new or new-to-me book, goes into hiatus when I’ve started it, like it, want to finish it but it gets put aside so long that it’s due back at the library or vanishes into a big miscellaneous pile of reading material.  Books on hiatus can be identified on my bookshelves because they still have bookmarks in them.  Hiatus books on Kindle are harder to track, as their titles slip farther and farther down on the list.

I only have three books on hiatus now, which is pretty good.  We Meant Well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, by Peter van Buren, is almost a current book.  When I turn on my Kindle, it still opens in this book, but the Kindle itself slid to the bottom of a pile of books, magazines, catalogs, and paid bills, which is how it got into hiatus status.  Kindle says I’ve read 90% of the book, it’s written in a very readable style, the subject is compelling and the author is a Foreign Service Officer, so this one has a good chance of getting finished soon.  I think I put it aside because it just got too depressing to read about how State and other USG agencies can mess up in spite of the best of intentions and the many (too many?) management controls in place.

I tracked down a copy of Away all Boats,  by Kenneth Dodson, after I found out that my beloved Uncle Ralph served on the real ship that Dodson, an officer on the ship, based his novel on.  The story is so realistic and so detailed that the storyline gets overwhelmed at times, and I got bogged down in it.  This beautiful 1950s vintage paperback is in the revolving bookcase, waiting for me to take it up again.  I think I’ll dip into another book about WW2 in the Pacific, Tales of the South Pacific, by James Michener, as a step back into Dodson.  This is a favorite of mine, with fascinating details about Michener’s experiences in the Navy giving an authentic voice to some great storytelling.  “Away all Boats” has some compelling voices too:  Dodson’s, and my uncle’s voice that echoes in some of the anecdotes included in the book.

I’m surprised that Midnight Rising, by Tony Horwitz, is also a hiatus book, also shelved in the revolving bookcase so I don’t forget about it.  Horwitz is an excellent writer, and his nonfiction books are favorites of mine, so I’m surprised this book about John Brown and the raid on Harper’s Ferry is in hiatus.  The first part of the book has fascinating information about John Brown’s life that was new to me, but the book slid into hiatus at the point where Brown and his band are getting ready to go into Harper’s Ferry.  I know that things are not going to turn out well for Brown and company, and Horwitz is so good that he’s made me care about all of them.  I need to trust Horwitz to not just tell a harrowing story, but put it into historical perspective so the sacrifices these men made, which includes sacrificing some high ideals, make sense.