I read a lot of books in February. Few of them applied to my challenges, though. The good news is that I continue to make progress on my great and worthy opponent, Mount TBR.

Climbing Mount Doom (Base goal: read or discard one book a week)
Week 1: Read Songs of America
Week 2: Read How To Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, Ben Shapiro
Week 3: Read The Authoritarian Moment, Ben Shapiro
Week 4: Read Jewels of Allah and Unmasked.

SCIENCE SURVEY (Base Goal: 12 Books)
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3/12 so far.

Readin’ Dixie (Base goal: one book a month)
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Classics Club (Base goal: 10 books)

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The Unreviewed:
Oh, boy. The two Shapiro books are getting a combined review, my review of Unmasked is pending The Authoritarian Moment because it’s a helpful illustration; and I just haven’t gotten to The Professor in the Cage yet. Jewels of Allah wasn’t as substantive as I’d hoped, and is a very brief history of female activism in Iran predating the Pahlavis and continuing to the present day. Of interest was the author’s argument that the shah’s overnight banning of hijabs, while intended to be empowering, instead isolated women from conservative families, as they avoided participating in society in an immodest state: while the mullah’s hijab mandate was equally offensive from a personal rights view, it allowed these women to fully engage with society, particularly in university attendance, and saw the forging of a uniquely Islamic feminism.

Coming up in March:

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, so I’ll be tackling Dante’s Purgatory, as well as finishing a book from an Orthodox source on the psychology of sin.