Musing Mondays: War Books...

 

Musing Mondays is hosted by Just one More Page and today's questions is about war books. Am I reader of war books? My first instinct was no I don't, but as I started to scan by book shelves I realized that a flat out no was not a sufficiently accurate answer.   I think the last book I read about war was Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War by Harry S. Stout (one of my professors). I read it for my Religion in American Society class in the fall of 2007 and the book was fabulous. It offered a different perspective on the Civil war, engaging the war from a moral perspective looking at the role of religion and God for both sides during the war.

Aside from the non-fiction genre like the book above I do have a tendency to read a lot of historical fiction that take place during WWII, like The Book Thief and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas etc., as well as the historical fiction set during the Civil War that look at slavery and racial tensions of that time, and the time immediately following.

I don't often read war books that are set on the front lines and are about the perspectives of the soldiers like The Pacific, (also an HBO show that my husband is obsessed with) or All Quiet on the Western Front (which I read many years ago in junior high). But I do enjoy well written non-fictional accounts of war as well as fictional books that are set during wars that allow a look inside the thoughts and lives of those who experienced those conflicts first hand.

That's my big messy answer. Which is far more complicated than my initial, "no".