….hmm. Well, I dispatched Mount Doom last year, so I don’t have that many. The Shahnameh and The Houses We Live In, plus The Origin of Feces is hiding somewhere. I think Taxi, a collection of interviews with Cairo cab drivers, is also at the post office. I’m going to go with Top Ten Books I Really Owe A Review. But first, the tease!
He winked at her when he handed over the reins. “The English breed fast horses and beautiful girls, my lady. I enjoyed sampling one of the two.” Millicent mounted quickly and looked over her shoulder at the bold young Welshman. “It is well you chose the one you could handle, my lord,” she said, wheeling the horse around and digging her heels into its flanks. (The Broken Realm)
He looked again at the land, silent, lonely, and lovely in the crisp northern air. The shadows of the anchored ships of the Grand Fleet suggested a maritime Valhalla full of ghostlike shapes frozen into a crystal silence in which the leaden water was the only thing that stirred. (The Dangerous Years)
Brought up on a diet of Bede, Gildas and King Arthur stories, we ‘knew’ that powerful warrior kings stormed ashore at the head of large, heavily armed warbands, sacking the cities, putting the villas to the flame and their Romanised inhabitants to the sword. Modern archaeological research tells a different tale. Pryor (2004) reflects a consensus of many modern historians when he writes, ‘To me the notion of Anglo-Saxon invasions is an archeologically absurd idea.’ To quote Fleming (2010), ‘By 420 Britain’s villas had been abandoned. Its towns were mostly empty, its organised industries dead, its connections with the wider Roman world severed; and all with hardly an Angle or Saxon in sight.’ And it happened in a single generation
(The Fall of Roman Britain: Why We Speak English)
Let’s start with the aged veterans of the Read-but-Unreviewed. In a 2016 New Years Resolutions post, I mentioned six books I’d read but not reviewed that I still want to review. In the last eight years, I’ve managed to review two of the six, Happy City and Cult of the Presidency. My zeal for reviewing Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Trash has faded over the years, leaving…
(1) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jane Jacobs. This book had such an effect on my thinking — being the catalyst for a mental sea change before I’d reached the halfway point — that it’s a shame I’ve never been able to review it.
(2) The Age of Absurdity, Michael Foley. A recommendation from Cyberkitten. I’ve re-read this one several times but never reviewed it.
(3) The Once and Future King: The Rise and Fall of Crown Government, F.H. Buckley. Examines how one-man dominance is returning in Anglo-American constitutions.
(4) Unnatural Selection: How We are Changing Life Gene by Gene, Emily Monosson. This was a fascinating NetGalley advance copy, so not reviewing it was especially wicked of me.
(5) Freedom and Virtue: the Conservative-Libertarian Debate, ed. George Carey. A collection of essays from different authors discussing overlap and opposition between libertarianism and conservative thinking of the time. My own political thinking is complicated and conflicted, so I found it especially provoking reading.
(6) This Brave New World: India, China, and the United States, Anja Manuel. Fascinating comparison of India and China, and an argument for how DC should approach its relationships with both powers.
(7) Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy Humanity Of Your Child, Anthony Esolen
(8) In Defense of Boyhood, Anthony Esolen.
(9) We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State, Kai Strittmatter
(10)The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis. I’ve read this book three times in the last four years.
