Very busy today but check out my new 2003 Book List!
This is a place where I am going to log every book I read this year. Should be interesting . . .
Kim by Ruyard Kipling
As I mentioned in a previous post, fellow blogger Ben Ausptiz was kind enough to send me the Ruyard Kipling classic Kim after he won the free book contest. I finished it but never managed to post my reactions until now.
I must say I am a bit intimidated by this book.
Blue Afternoon by William Boyd
As long as I am offering book recomendations I might as well catch up on some books I have read without reporting back.
One such book, William Boyd’s The Blue Afternoon was another of those random books I picked up at Half Price Books. (BTW, “random books” are books that I just pick up out of the blue at discount and used book stores. They key is that they must be books you have never heard of and that you pick out based on nothing more than the cover and dust jacket information. Cheap entertainment these days!)
It peaked my interest because the bulk of the story is told in a flashback. The story starts in 1930’s Hollywood but soon flashes back to Turn of the Century Phillipines.
The Penguin Lives Series
Speaking of concise but elegant works on interesting subjects. The Penguin Lives Series is another good example. I have mentioned this series before (here is my review of Paul Johnson’s volume on Napoleon).
Recently I picked up new volumes on Winston Churchill (by John Keegan); Mao Zedong (by Jonathan D. Spence); and Pope John XXII (by Thomas Cahill). What a great way to learn about some crucial figures in history without having to read a thousand pages in a multi-volume biography. The subjects range from Dante and Budha to Marcel Proust and Rosa Parks. As they say on TV, they make great gifts too!
The American Revolution: A History by Gordon S Wood
Faithful readers of this blog will know that I am a sucker for a short well-designed book on an interesting subject. The Modern Library Chronicles Series is aimed at producing just such books. The reason I bring this up is that I just finished one: The American Revolution: A History by Gordon S. Wood.
While I have neither the expertise nor the time and energy to give you a full-fledged review, I would like to recommend it. If you are looking for a quick read on this interesting subject or if you wouldn’t mind knowing a little bit more about this nation’s founding without getting bogged down in some academic tome, this would be a good place to start.
The American Revolution is no stranger to the tug and pull of partisan cheerleading posing as scholarship (not to say that some of that cheerleading isn’t accurate and worthwhile). I am sure that those with strong interest and/or knowledge in the subject would say that Gordon S. Wood has a bias and/or “a take” on many of the issues involved but he attempts in this book not to make this a moralistic story of right and wrong but instead views “how the Revolution came about, what its character was, and what its consequences were” as “the questions this brief history seeks to answer.”
James Burnham and The Struggle for the World
Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out this pathetic Michael Lind article in The Corner on Monday and it has roused me from my stupor. Lind’s polemical hit and run on conservatives comes dressed up as a book review of James Burnham and the Struggle For the World by Daniel Kelly. Since I have read the book in question and since I did my Masters Thesis on Burnham and containment, I thought it appropriate that I set the record straight. Lind’s essay provides an easy target, as it is full of intellectual dishonesty, attempted smears, and historical tunnel vision. What follows is not a full-fledged deconstruction or “fisking” but rather an overview of some of the major errors.