"Real Life"? Not For Me

Non-fiction is difficult and frustrating...and I am not at this particular point discussing literature. I'm talking about life here, and it's unceasing capacity to pound people into sniveling submission while offering tempting glimpses (in the form of the rich and famous/infamous) of just what we are missing while we worry about dozens of "real-world" problems which threaten to overwhelm us at any given time. Those insulated from real struggles, for example, a BP executive lamenting how much the oil spill is costing his company...in spite of the more than $300 million dollars it has made this year leave the rest of us humbler sorts merely slack-jawed at their arrogance.
So...I seldom read non-fiction. My life is non-fiction, and many times it's more of a Tess of the D'Urbervilles type of non-fiction than it is a The Blind Side type of non-fiction. I prefer to lose myself in a world that mimics reality in a general sort of way though I don't always require a happy-ever-after ending. I just need to get away from reading textbooks and living an all-too-humbling real life, replete with worries about money, kids, aging, relationships and health. Since I never take a bath, the "Calgon, take me away" thing won't work so I leave it to fiction: pulp fiction, detective fiction and historical fiction of which my most recent forays have involved two fictional history series concerning ancient Rome: one by Conn Iggulden and one by Steven Saylor. Imagining being a part of life more than a thousand years ago with real live historical figures is great escapism. Every now and then, though, I get sucked back into real life as I did recently.
Like everyone else in the country, I read Three Cups of Tea months ago and was struck by how little I was actually doing to represent all that's good about our country...not like Greg Mortensen. Then, on Saturday while I was waiting for my sweetie to check out at the library, I happened to notice a book entitled Dining with Al-Kaeda, the recollections of a British correspondent for The Wall Street Journal who had spent thirty years covering the MidEast as a journalist. Intrigued by the title, I began perusing it and managed about 20 pages before it was time to go...but I couldn't let it go. I added it to my stash of reading material and spent the next three days reading with amazement Hugh Pope's accounts of what that region was and is really like...and I must say that it provided a perspective that I was somewhat unprepared to experience.
Read it for yourself. I'm going back to "whodunit" fiction for the remainder of the evening and for the near future.
Reality bites.