From The Heart Of Ohio

A Tale

Of Three Books

– At Once

.Lately we have taken on a project that we not only do not like very much, but also would not recommend, namely reading more than one book at a time. Although the he-we would often be reading more than one book, we have never been a fan of doing so. However, due to an interesting set of circumstances, we found ourselves doing just that.
Not long ago, James M. McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom, The Civil War Era” was next up in our pile of books to be read. So we commenced to reading it. But, no sooner had we started the Civil War book, when we were informed by our local bookstore, Paragraphs, that “Once Upon a Time at the Opera House: Drama at Three Historic Michigan Theaters, 1882-1928,” by James Berton Harris had come in.
And since the opera house book was written by not only a good friend, but also a colleague during our time at both the University of Michigan and Boston University, we decided to postpone the Civil War book and take up the opera house book.
Unfortunately, given not only the shape, but also the weight, of the opera house book, we found we were unable to read it during our daily two 30-minute times riding the exercise bike. Thus we decided we would read the opera book while enjoying our morning coffee and return to the Civil War book while exercising.