Category: Books

Books I am reading, have read, want to read, or that stay with me.

Books of 2021: A Promised Land

This is the first volume of what promises to be a two-volume presidential memoir. I decided to order the audiobook for this one, and no regrets: whatever opinions you hold about Barack Hussein Obama and his presidency, he has an orator’s voice. Given the man and tone of the memoir, I cannot imagine experiencing it any differently.

Like most presidents, Obama has a complex legacy, and I would argue that those of us not otherwise disposed to pillory or lionize him have put off an honest analysis of that legacy until such time as criticism may not seem to offer undue comfort and legitimacy to the forces of fascism in this country. Until then, we shall gather our string, take our notes, and listen to Mr. Obama deliver his side of the story.

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Twitter’s not all bad

Turtledove’s “How Few Remain,” an alternate history of a divided America.

I followed Harry Turtledove on Twitter. He followed me back. And he even sent me a note.

How bloody cool is that?

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This will be the last one for a while. I have now reached the point where the unread books on my shelves now exceed the funds to acquire more.

For the last 30 years I have lived by a simple maxim: when you have income but no time, buy books. When you have time but no income, read books.

And so the reading begins.

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Thanks in no small part to Mark Wahlberg, I have read my first Spenser story, and now have a new guilty vice.
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Books of 2021: The Myth of Chinese Capitalism

It wasn’t that Tiff told me anything I didn’t already know. It is, rather, the way he lays all the facts out in a cogent argument that made me stop and think. Creating new terms and adding modifiers to frame China’s current economic system and business climate as “capitalism” was once a hopeful expression that China was somehow transitioning to something recognizably capitalist. Today it is clear that any concessions to capital were temporary and expedient, and that the Party has never strayed from its desire to build a centrally-controlled economy that can satisfy the material needs of the people while building national power and prestige.
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Books of 2021: The City We Became

I sat down to do a quick blurb about this book, and it turned into an essay.

The tl:dr:

“It has opened my mind and expanded my literary tastes, all while forcing me to grapple with intriguing ideas and wrestle with old prejudices. This is not the kind of reading I could handle every day: the aged mind can only process so may challenges in a compressed time frame. But it is for scaling conceptual heights that I liberated my mind from the workplace, so I will be coming back for my next fix soon.”

The sequel, The World We Make, is on my must-reads list.

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You know that you’re a fanatical book collector when, while going through your library, you stop and do a count and you discover that you own no less than 50 medical books, and you’re not even a medical professional.

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Winter Morning Music

red and orange solar flare
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Standing under a heater vent blowing 70-degree air on me, I still get goosebumps listening to Ed Sheeran singing “I See Fire” from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Removed we may be from the foothills of Erebor, but we never seem far from the breath of the great drake.

For there are days beneath brown hills, Santannas blowing dry from the Northeast bending the palms and sending crackles of static through hair and wool, when if you listen closely, you can hear the chuckle of the Old Wyrm amidst the howling tempest, and your breath stops, waiting in dread for the ridges to explode in flame.

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Books of 2021: The Complete Sherlock Holmes

Expanding my reading to include the detective fiction genre after bingeing “Longmire” on Netflix – and heeding Susan Wise Bauer‘s enjoinment to approach a new subject or genre chronologically – I naturally began with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. After running through the four novels and five short-story collections composing the Sherlock Holmes canon, I can attest that I am not just hooked, I am downright fired-up.

In addition to a growing stack of books from Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert B. Parker, and Craig Johnson, I am working on an essay about Holmes. There is a lot of pulp out there, but in a genre known rather more for its pot-boiler tendencies than its literary chops, I am finding much to appreciate beyond pure diversion.

That said, next up is a little Jesse Stone, purely for diversion.

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