The Problem with History Books

[arrowwhiskers]

I am reading a historical anthology about Peru, and encountering a consistent problem that I've personally had with LAS: any comprehensive book about a L. American country, or about L. American history in general has to cover three eras: pre-Colombian, Conquest/Colonial Rule, and Post-Independence. I hate to admit it, it makes me an awful person, but I have extremely limited (read: almost no) interest in Pre-Colombian history. I mean, I do, but only in the vaguest sense...I'm interested in those things to the extent that they have an effect on modern day culture and beliefs, but the little details bore me to tears. Reading paper after paper about bloodlines of the Mayan elite and the minutiae of Andean deity systems is kind of my idea of "meh". Conquest and colonial rule is marginally more interesting, because you start to see political, cultural, and economic structures that still have direct modern-day prevalence, but at the same time, there's only so many times I can read about the conquest. So I end up getting books for which the first half or two thirds are kind of tiresome, because what really interests me, detail-wise, is the stuff about the modern era. Information about recent events also tends to be what varies most between different books, because the pool of accounts to draw from is so much vaster and less standardized (as opposed to the same archeological records/Spanish diaries that show up everywhere, etc). THe obvious solution would be to skip over the earlier parts and just get to the good part, but I feel like that's cheating. I could justify it if I already knew all the pre-Colombian and Conquest info by heart, but since I manage to forget at least some every time, it seems the least I can do to read it again. xD It just makes generalized Latin AMerican history books a little bit slow going, but alas...I seem to be inevitably drawn to them anyway. I am ALMOST to the conquest in this book here, having just gotten through the parts about the Andean spiritual gender dialectic and Incan textile production.

On a different note, I tried making ginger tea from real ginger (per the recommendation of a friend), and it keeps coming out just a bit too weak, regardless of how much ginger I seem to use. I am hoping this is because Target's ginger sucks, and that maybe if I get some at Sprouts, it'll be more potent. I also think I'm super ODing on the stuff, and maybe that's why it's not helping as much...or maybe I really am *that sick* that it actually is helping but I'm miserable anyway. GAAAA. I know I should be looking forward to the doctor appointment I have on Monday, but I'm only kind of dreading it instead. -_-;

The only point of this entry was to take a break...so I guess now it's time to go back to reading. :)