Tag: reading

2020 reading list

As I have before, I once again present my reading list for 2020. I first list the books I read (in roughly chronological order), and then make a few observations and comments.

  • The Ruin of Kings — Jenn Lyons
  • The Sharded Boy — L. Darby Gibbs
  • The Man Who was Orthodox — G.K. Chesterton
  • Cards of Grief — Jane Yolen
  • Frey — Melissa Wright
  • Liberal Fascism — Jonah Goldberg
  • Faerie Fruit — Charlotte E. English
  • New Spring — Robert Jordan
  • Tenured Radicals — Roger Kimball
  • A God in Chains — Matthew Hughes
  • Song of Blood and Stone — L. Penelope
  • Sister Emily’s Lightship — Jane Yolen
  • The Road — Cormac McCarthy
  • Avowals and Denials — G.K. Chesterton
  • The Laughing Prophet — Emile Cammaerts
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight — J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Palace of Lost Memories — C.J. Archer
  • Bringer of Storms — L.B. Graham [reread]
  • Fire and Sword — Dylan Doose
  • The Sounds of Poetry — Robert Pinsky [reread?]
  • A Wind in the Door — Madeleine L’Engle
  • The Saint’s Rise — Michael Grist
  • The Four Gospels from a Lawyer’s Standpoint — Edmund Hatch Bennett
  • Collected Works Vol. X: Collected Poetry Part 2 — G.K. Chesterton
  • The Strongman and the Mermaid — Kathleen Shoop
  • The Jews — Hilaire Belloc
  • The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun — J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Verlyn Flieger
  • Good Day! — Paul J. Batura
  • Beyond This Dark House — Guy Gavriel Kay
  • St. Thomas Aquinas — G.K. Chesterton [reread]
  • The Black Earth trilogy — M.S. Verish
  • The Club of Queer Trades — G.K. Chesterton
  • Tales from the Perilous Realm — J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Man Who Knew Too Much — G.K. Chesterton
  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet — Madeleine L’Engle
  • Collected Works Vol. X: Collected Poetry Part 3 — G.K. Chesterton
  • To Kill a Fae — Jamie A. Waters
  • Shadow in the Deep — L.B. Graham [reread]
  • The Guns of Ivrea — Clifford Beal
  • The Father Brown Stories — G.K. Chesterton
  • Many Waters — Madeleine L’Engle
  • An Acceptable Time — Madeleine L’Engle
  • The Darker Road — L.B. Graham
  • The Spice of Life — G.K. Chesterton
  • Haiku Harvest — Peter Beilenson, editor/translator
  • Poetry as Liturgy — Margo Swiss, editor

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Now for some comments. I came just short of my low-key goal of 50 books. To be perfectly honest, this is due in large part to my increased amount of video-game consumption. I hope to get more good reading in this year, though.

Once again, and to no surprise, G.K. Chesterton tops my most-read authors list. This, I warn the reader, will likely continue for years to come. I intend to read all of GKC’s works by the time I die, and it might take that long. But more than that, he and his writing are always refreshing and encouraging to me; I sometimes find myself feeling down or disturbed, and realize I haven’t read any Chesterton in a while. And there’s always more GKC to read.

I was about to link to my post on Chesterton, when I realized I don’t have one yet. Shameful. I’ll get one up this year—call it a resolution.

As in the past few years, fantasy has been the most-read genre on my list. I do not mind this either. A number of these fantasy works have been rather obscure, one might say; this is due partly to my use of BookBub, which provides me with lists of discounted ebooks, and my possession of a Kobo e-reader. As an aside, I have thoughts on e-readers; I’ll have to make a post about that at some point as well.

Anyways, another significant part of my reading this year has been poetry. The larger part of this has been G.K. Chesterton again; the two volumes of collected poetry are hefty tomes. But some of the Tolkien, the Kay, and of course the last two entries on the list are also poetry. Plus there was Pinsky’s The Sounds of Poetry, which I may have previously read and forgotten, but which this time round was immensely helpful.

Another minor trend in my reading has been some non-fiction. In terms of books, particularly at the start of the year, but all throughout the year I have of course been reading academic articles for school and thesis research. I used to read almost exclusively non-fiction as a boy; last year I enjoyed the books I read, and hope to read more non-fiction this year.

Perhaps because of my increased rate of poetry consumption, I have suddenly started writing poetry this year. I’ve dabbled for years, but this year it suddenly became more serious, as it were. Since writing is rather the inverse of reading, I will not discuss it further here (I have already, for instance here, and I intend to post more poetry in the future).

A proper favourites-of-the-year post may come in the following days, but for now, I’ll just note a few of the standouts. Chesterton’s work, of course, but especially the poems, some of which are phenomenal. The Father Brown stories are classics that I thoroughly enjoyed. Jane Yolen’s writing is generally exceptional, especially the short-story collection Sister Emily’s Lightship. Revisiting Robert Jordan’s world via New Spring was particularly enjoyable as well. Clifford Beal’s The Guns of Ivrea was swashbuckling good fun. And on the theme of reading more poetry this year, I’ve really come to love haiku, such as those in Peter Beilenson’s edited volumes. Reading some new Tolkien was a delight, as well.

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Well, that’s a random bunch of comments. But it was fun to revisit in memory this year’s reading. If you’ve made it this far, thank you! And all best wishes for a happy and reading-filled new year!

2019 reading list

Hello, I’m back! Happy New Year!

As I have done for the last few years, this year I kept a record of the books I read (or more precisely, that I finished from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31 of 2019). And as I have done for the last few years, I again present that list here, with a few comments afterwards.

  • Truthwitch — Susan Dennard
  • Twelve Types — G.K. Chesterton
  • The Emperor’s Edge (Emperor’s Edge #1) — Lindsay Buroker
  • Poems — G.K. Chesterton
  • Dark Currents (Emperor’s Edge #2) — Lindsay Buroker
  • Greybeards at Play — G.K. Chesterton
  • The Philosophy of Tolkien — Peter Kreeft
  • The Innocence of Father Brown — G.K. Chesterton
  • Provocations — Sybil Bristowe
  • Deadly Games (Emperor’s Edge #3) — Lindsay Buroker
  • Eugenics and Other Evils — G.K. Chesterton (reread)
  • Prayer: Why Our Words to God Matter — Corey Russell
  • The Song of Achilles — Madeleine Miller
  • Godhunter — Amy Sumida
  • Scholastic Metaphysics — Edward Feser
  • Dancer’s Lament (Path to Ascendancy #1) — Ian C. Esslemont (reread)
  • Deadhouse Landing (Path to Ascendancy #2) — Ian C. Esslemont (reread)
  • Kellanved’s Reach (Path to Ascendancy #3) — Ian C. Esslemont
  • Analytic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction — Michael Beaney
  • On Nothing and Related Subjects — Hilaire Belloc
  • The Weight of Glory — C.S. Lewis
  • What We Can’t Not Know — J. Budzisziewski
  • The Trees of Pride — G.K. Chesterton
  • Duskfall — Christopher Husberg
  • The Four Men: A Farrago — Hilaire Belloc
  • The Fionavar Tapestry — Guy Gavriel Kay (reread)
  • Pure: Philosophy, Modernity, and the One — Mark Anderson
  • Hakon of Rogen’s Saga — Erik Christian Haugaard
  • Fear of Knowledge — Paul Boghossian
  • Labyrinth — Kate Mosse
  • Heretics — G.K. Chesterton (reread)
  • Beauty: A Very Short Introduction — Roger Scruton
  • A Slave’s Tale — Erik Christian Haugaard
  • String City — Graham Edwards
  • Letter to a Suffering Church — Bishop Robert Barron
  • Real Essentialism — David Oderberg
  • Meditations on Middle-Earth — Karen Haber (ed.)
  • Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart — Steven Erikson
  • Five Proofs of the Existence of God — Edward Feser
  • Making a Poem — Miller Williams
  • The Half-Made World — Felix Gilman
  • Feeling and Form — Susanne Langer
  • Art and Scholasticism and The Frontiers of Poetry — Jacques Maritain (trans. Joseph Evans)
  • The Rape of the Masters — Roger Kimball
  • The Everlasting Man — G.K. Chesterton (reread)
  • Essays by Modern Masters — E.V. Rieu (ed.)
  • The Poetic World of Classic Korean Women Writers — Lee Hai-soon
  • When the Heavens Fall — Marc Turner
  • The League of the Long Bow — G.K. Chesterton
  • A Wrinkle in Time — Madeleine L’Engle
  • The Structure of Objects — Kathryn Koslicki
  • Beyond the Summerland (The Binding of the Blade #1) — L.B. Graham (reread)

Once again, G.K. Chesterton leads the list of most-read authors. I doubt this will change any time soon. He wrote too much, and I love him too much, to expect it to change.
And again, fantasy is the top genre, although I think I read a wider range of genres this year than I typically have in the past. I also read a decent number of philosophy books, which I hope to continue doing.
(As an aside in a similar vein, it probably doesn’t need to be said, but just in case, I also read numerous articles, blog posts, and academic papers throughout the year. But for whatever reason, they don’t feel like they should make the list, whether because it seems like illegitimate list-padding, or because I don’t want to laboriously keep track of absolutely everything I read, or because you should read real books, darnit!)

Anyways, a few hit-and-run highlights and special mentions. Chesterton, obviously, was insightful, entertaining, and wise as ever. Lindsay Buroker’s Emperor’s Edge series was surprisingly fun, but I haven’t read past the first three books yet. The Fionavar Tapestry was as good as I remembered, and I’ll have a re-review posted soon. Miller’s The Song of Achilles was compelling; I blazed through it in short order—very much a “can’t-put-it-down” read. Esslemont’s Path to Ascendancy trilogy was everything I hoped it would be. Gilman’s The Half-Made World was dark, disturbing, but ultimately a good story with delightful world-building. I’d been wanting to read L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series for quite a while, and was glad to finally get started; I’ll be continuing it in during 2020. Mark Anderson’s Pure was also a delight to read, thoughtful and provocative. C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, a book of some of his sermons and lectures, was also dense with deep ideas and profundity—I’ll have to go back to both of these books and reread them.

One real surprise was Graham Edwards’ String City—a truly enjoyable read, in a genre that I don’t often read. Actually, a rather unique mash-up of genres that I doubt many read at all. String City is a kind of wild science-fiction detective story; that makes it sound like Sherlock Holmes in space, but trust me, it’s much more bizarre (and much more wonderful) than that. This was one of my top books of the year.

I also really enjoyed Erik Christian Haugaard’s two-book series, set on the fictional island of Rogen during the Viking period. But I have already written about those books elsewhere.

Also, I read more books than last year—finally getting that total over fifty again! While I don’t really need a goal to keep me reading, and while having a goal can cause me to focus less on enjoying the reading or make me hurry through a book too fast, it’s still fun to look back—it’s satisfying, and also makes for a short but enjoyable trip down memory lane.

Onwards! I have more reading to do—some of it planned, but most of it not. (I’ve already got one book down—and a pretty good one, too!) I’m excited to see what I’ll end up reading, and what treasures I’ll discover. Let’s meet up again next year!

3 reflections from last semester

This term I’m beginning an MA program in philosophy, after doing a postbaccalaureate (premasters) program last semester. In this post, I’m just going to share a few things I noticed over the last four months—the first time I’ve ever been a philosophy student proper (previously I’d only taken a few courses here and there on the side, while technically being in another faculty).

One thing I noticed is that the people in the philosophy faculty generally seem to have a surprisingly poor grasp of Christianity—what it says, teaches, holds, etc. Someone asked at a Q&A how a theory would handle a certain type of case, and the sacrifical death of Jesus Christ came up as an example. It quickly became apparent that the people talking had only a general knowledge of the facts of the story, and no theological knowledge, or even knowledge of the deeper details of Christian theology. Not that they went blithely on, talking about what that about which they knew little. They knew perfectly well that they weren’t deeply familiar with the story, and so dropped it as an illustration (a wise move). But I was struck by their lack of knowledge of something that has been so fundamental to my life for virtually my whole life—and more, something that has been so fundamental to the origin and development of Western civilization. This, I think, is the true meaning of post-Christian—not that people generally don’t believe after a period of unbelief, but one step past that, where people are no longer entirely sure what it is they don’t believe (or perhaps they think they know, but they actually don’t—not to any deep extent).

On a somewhat related point, I noticed that there is an aversion held by many of the faculty and students to anything labelled “spooky.” Or, perhaps, the labelling of various apparently undesirable implications as “spooky.” What this exactly means isn’t usually spelled out, but it seems to be more or less anything that is entirely or essentially non-physical, except for abstract objects. That is, anything that might be “spiritual” in a very broad sense, or possibly even “mental” (as opposed to physical). I’m not sure how this is supposed to square with the acceptance of things like propositions. The existence of universals is considered at least plausible, even if any one particular person doesn’t believe in them. As I said, it’s a little vague (or possibly stronger than that—incoherent?). Regardless, it seems to betray a sort of “preferential materialism.”

Finally, I noticed a general lack of reading in the university’s (large) student body. Interestingly, it’s not so much an inability to read as simply not reading. By way of example: for a few weeks, some of the doors at the gym had a sign saying “Please use other doors” on them. I saw a number of people walk up to the doors and try them, and only when the doors don’t open did they seem to actually read the sign and move to the other doors. Another example, also from the gym (hmm, maybe it’s just the environment), occurred a number of times. People will put their dumbbells back onto the rack, but in the wrong place. Sometimes there’s even a little label saying which dumbbells go where, but people put them in the wrong place anyway. Obviously, they’re not reading, even something as simple as a two- or three-digit number.

It’s possible that all the people involved in these incidents were just absent-minded or daydreaming or whatever (God knows I’m sometimes like that too), but I was struck by the incidents. For pretty much as long as I can remember, reading has been almost instinctive for me. When I see a word, I’ve already read it—it’s like I see the word first, not the letters. More, it’s almost like I subconsciously look for words to read. Words are my friends. But the example above got me wondering if perhaps others have to work harder at reading comprehension—have to piece together letters into words, and words into sentences. That sounds like a lot of work.

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These are just a few reflections on things I noticed last semester. I hope to post a bit more, now that the Christmas break is over and I’m getting back into the rhythm of school and homework. I’ve got quite a few in the works. I’d also like to post short blurbs with ideas and connections I make in my classes.

Stay tuned.

2018 Reading List

As I did last year, I here post a list of the books I read in 2018. I didn’t read as many books as I had hoped; I was hoping to read more than 2017, but for various reasons, mostly involving busyness, it didn’t happen. Hopefully 2019 is an even more prolific year.

The books are listed roughly in chronological order by finish date.

Deadhouse Landing — Ian C. Esslemont

The Lightning Tree [reread] — Patrick Rothfuss

Oathbringer — Brandon Sanderson

Song of Susannah — Stephen King

Gilgamesh — trans. Herbert Mason

The Ballad of the White Horse — G.K. Chesterton

The Dark Tower — Stephen King

The Lies of Locke Lamora [reread] — Scott Lynch

Sword of the Rightful King — Jane Yolen

The Ball and the Cross — G.K. Chesterton

Discourse on Method and the Meditations — René Descartes, trans. F.E. Sutcliffe

The Dark Foundations (series) [reread] — Chris Walley

Harry Potter (series) — J.K. Rowling

Manalive — G.K. Chesterton

The Flying Inn — G.K. Chesterton

El Liberalismo es Peccado (Liberalism is a Sin) — Fr. Felix Sardà y Salvany, trans. Conde B. Pallen

Weaveworld — Clive Barker

On Tour (series) [reread] — Barb Huff

White as Milk, Red as Blood —Franz Xavier von Schönwerth, trans Shelley Tanaka

The Dhammapada — trans. Juan Mascaró

Martin Buber’s Ten Rungs — Martin Buber

Magical Symbols — Frederick Goodman

The Sarantine Mosaic (series) — Guy Gavriel Kay

The Ballad of the White Horse [reread] — G.K. Chesterton

Critique of Pure Music — James O. Young

In Defense of Sanity — G.K. Chesterton

Animal Farm — George Orwell

Defiant Joy — Kevin Belmonte

Philosophy in a New Key — Susanne K. Langer

The Defendant — G.K. Chesterton

The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien

Children of the Nameless — Brandon Sanderson

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As before, just a few comments and reflections on the list. My reading this year was dominated by three main trends, which reflect my interests nicely—fantasy, philosophy, and Chesterton. I intend to keep up my reading in all three of these areas.

This year was the first time that I’d ever read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It was long overdue, I thought—I felt that I really needed to read works that had become such a cultural touchstone. And I very much enjoyed them! I was excited to read each book, more so than I’ve been for quite a while.

This year I also finished reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series (began in 2017). Weird as it was, I enjoyed it as well. Somehow, King’s massively referential collage style works.

I read Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, which has long been on my radar—ever since I read an advertisement for it in the back pages of my copy of The Lord of the Rings when I was probably eleven or twelve. I finally got to reading it after finding it at a booksale, and while it wasn’t quite what I expected, it was decent.

A bit of a sleeper hit this year was Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Sarantine Mosaic. Upon finishing it, I knew I enjoyed it (I think I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read from Kay so far), but it’s recently come back into my mind, and I’ve been thinking about it a bit more lately. I think I’m starting to appreciate it even more now, somehow. I don’t think I’ll reread it anytime soon, but I do want to read more from Kay. This year I hope to reread his Fionavar Tapestry, which I remember being very good.

One area in which I hope to read more is philosophy, especially given that I’m now officially in a university philosophy program. One difficulty I foresee is that most of the reading assigned in coursework is not books but articles, which I’m not including on my reading lists. Of course, this is a logical choice for assigned reading, but it does tend to reduce one’s free time that could be spent reading.

A second area in which I really should read more is just “old books.” C.S. Lewis once suggested that people should alternate reading old and new books, or at the least, one old book for every three new ones [from his Introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation]. I read a handful of old books this last year, but not even close to one in four (I’m sorry, Professor Lewis).

Anyway, on to a new year of more reading, fun, learning, and truth!

On Harry Potter

I’ve finally gotten around to reading J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (and watching the film adaptations). I had never read them before, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. More seriously, I also felt that I really ought to be familiar with them, given how significant a cultural touchstone the books and their characters and events are.

Continue reading “On Harry Potter”