Have I been reading lately?

I think I have.

In fact, I remember finishing Fontanka 16, another entry on my age-old books to read list. It's a history - pretty readable for an academic work - about the secret police in tsarist Russia. There are lots of biographies and sideplots to keep the thing moving. But I think I expected it to provide more insight into the Cheka, NKVD, OGPU, KGB (etc) than it did.

Right now I am trying to read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, another long-time curiosity. It seemed especially relevant to read about the decline in civic participation since my job is all about improving civic education. But it is sloooow. It just started to pick up a little bit though. Fun fact: there is a high correlation of religious participation and civic participation. If you are active in a church, synagogue, mosque, etc., you are more likely to volunteer and join committees, vote, and what not. Even if you take out the church-specific involvement, you're still more likely to be civically engaged. I had had my suspicions about this growing up, when I envied my religiously active friends the community and social capital they were developing. However, and this is the part I find fascinating, it doesn't hold true for evangelical congregations. Members of these groups are likely to be highly active within their religious community, but there isn't crossover into other outlets of civic participation.

Anyway, I think I need to take a break from non-fiction sometime soon and switch to some fun books. (On the other hand, current fiction reading, book club selection Dangling Man by Saul Bellow, is no more engaging than the above selections.)