Below is a not-so-short piece in a bit of an academic style inspired in part by the recent flooding in the Midwestern U.S., but also in part by some random reads that have actually tied together into a coherent picture. Just warning ahead of time, so you don’t think it is one of my fluff stories regarding beer and wine in the Austrian countryside…
When I first arrived in Vienna, I was a bit starved for good reading, especially before our shipment of stuff came. Most of the bookstores here in Vienna have a small section of English books, but most of them are supremely overpriced or relatively uninteresting (especially in light of those who remember my quirk of not often reading fiction…). I got lucky one day, though, when I wandered into a bookstore off the Graben, and found a sale bin underneath the table in the small English books section, and a half-price title called Rising Tide caught my eye enough to pony up the 7 Euro.
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