Reading log: Blackout/All Clear

[toorsdenote]

My mother recently started a blog about books she's reading, and while I am not likely to write book reviews with that level of thoughtfulness, I thought I could use this heretofore underutilized blog to jot down notes on what I read.

My first books of the year were Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis. Both books are set in the same universe as one of my favorite books of all time, Doomsday Book -- which is to say, the world of c. 2060, in which Oxford grad students study history by making field trips using a time machine. While Doomsday Book is set mostly in the Middle Ages, Blackout/All Clear are set in World War II England.

I'd never though much about the Londoners who didn't evacuate during the Blitz. It's hard for me even to imagine the mindset that would allow you to wake up every morning and go in to work as a shopgirl on Oxford Street while every night your neighborhood is being bombed. Wouldn't you leave? Even if you didn't know anyone outside London or have a job lined up, wouldn't you try heading somewhere else and figure you might be homeless but at least you'd be alive? When I mentioned this to a friend he said, Staying in London wasn't brave; it was stupid. I hadn't actually suggested that it WAS brave; I don't have any idea what to consider it. I just think it's crazy that people are so adaptable we apparently get used to living in war zones.

The other notable thing about these books is that they're looooong. 1147 pages total. That's more than half the TOTAL number of pages I managed to read last year.* So I guess I'm off to a good start.

* At least, if the only books I read were the ones I read on my phone (i.e., The Remains of the Day; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; Hyperion; The Graveyard Book; Never Let Me Go; and Wicked). I may have read other ones on actual paper, but I don't remember.

Comments

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but I think that staying in London during the Blitz had more to do with damn-fool stubbornness, the British attitude that No-Matter-What things MUST Stay the Same.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_tove/]

It seems likely to me that there were people who cared about their material possessions (didn't want to lose things to looting) and didn't think the odds of actually dying were that high. People can be very delusional about the odds of dying when it's in the abstract. Why would anyone ever drink and drive, or have unprotected sex with a stranger, otherwise?

I think you're right, though, that the British cultural attitudes towards familiarity might have been a factor; specifically, they might have helped people sustain their beliefs about not dying. If we stay here and pretend that nothing's changed, then nothing can really change, right?

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I don't think that drunk-driving or unprotected sex are valid examples really, because in both cases, certainly with DUI, one has ALREADY been "carried away" and lost their ability to reason. Being Drunk MAKES you feel fine about yourself, so "Hell yeah, I can drive!"

I'm thinking how the British response to pretty much ANY thing is "Have a cuppa Tea, dear".

If we're talking books, another reference to this British bullheadedness, would be in Kurt Vonnegut's most excellent Slaughterhouse-Five. I can't find the exact quote, but there is a conversation with the British Officer POWs, and they [being POWs, living in a slaughterhouse basement while the Allies firebomb the hell out of Dresden] go on and on about the importance of maintaining an exact routine, and the special importance of "regular BMs".