Eh.  I need some truly poetic sentiment by way of brain bleach after the solution of The Roman Hat Mystery. 

And since the dice just sent me to the Patagonian Star square for the third time in less than two weeks (even though as a compensation I did also get to collect the Race Car joker on the way), I'm going to use the "Cat" card I picked up in the last round to read whatever I feel like reading.  Or listening to -- though even the very first words out of Crispin Redman's mouth tell me that I am urgently going to need the print version of this book, too.  Not because of the quality of his reading, which is just fine as long as he sticks to English -- but Patrick Leigh Fermor was fluent in German and lavishly quotes German poetry in the original in his books; including right at the beginning of Chapter 1 of Between the Woods and the Water ... and it took me several rewinds to even have a rudimentary sense of what Redman thought he was reading butchering virtually beyond recognition.  (And I shudder to think of what he's going to make of the Latin poetry, which Leigh Fermor also had a habit of lavishly quoting in the original.)  Anyway, off to Hungary and Romania we go!

Bah. I am still annoyed we had to read this terrible book for our course. We are not new to the government or understanding the branches of government. I think if you are a new federal employee you should check out this book. I was probably also not pleased because we had to hear an all day lecture about how Congress works (the House, the Senate), the Judiciary, and then the Executive Branch. My face was just a literal grimace when we finished. You know how hard it was for me to not jump up on the table and scream this isn't the way things work anymore! 

"The Dance of Legislation" follows Eric Redman as a new staffer on the Hill trying to pass the National Health Services Bill in the 1970s while working for Senator Warren Magnuson. Redman seems so quaint now about how things work on the Hill when you realize that Mitch McConnell is the devil's own and is doing his best to break the government. Sorry, I had a lot of bile to spill since it became apparently some of my class was conservative leaning (not an issue) but it is when you have to hear people complaining about why can't people on both sides get along. Shut the hell up, kids are in cages, the Amazon is on fire, the President of the United States is a freaking racist. I got no patience anymore. 

Ahem.

Back to the book, this was just very long. I got really bored. There's a foreword to the 2001 edition and then another one to the original edition, and then a freaking preface. i fell asleep reading this book several times until I made myself sit up and drink coffee. I hate books that make my brain angry because I really really wanted to DNF this book a bunch. I couldn't of course since this was part of our case study work. Stupid learning. 

Redman is not a natural story teller. He jumps around. A lot. You want to yell get to the freaking point several times on. Also reading about how he had to work to get support for this bill started to bore me. I rather have watched Schoolhouse Rock sing to me about how a bill becomes a law on a loop for 24 hours. I say this as someone who loves history, but only when the person writing is can tell that history in such a way that compels me to want to read more. The history major in me went gah a few times. I even went to Wikipeida at one point to read a condense version of events since I just wanted to get to the end already. 

There's an epilogue (which I skipped) and even a postscript that I also skipped. 

Collision (Serial Killer Unit Book 2) by Allie Redman Author

A thrilling, sexy, heart pounding romantic suspense that will have you on the edge of your seat ! Meet Shane and Macy and go along on this heart pounding journey with them.