Lisa at London Fog tagged me.
Number of Books – Not that many, actually. I have limited space, so tend to move out anything I don’t intend to read twice. The only ones I keep are a few favourites (around 10) and my dog breeding reference books, breed magazines (back into the 1960’s), etc. There are quite a few of those, and they’re relatively rare, so they get priority.
Last Book Purchased – Carnage And Culture – The Western Way of War by Victor Davis Hanson. There’s an interview here.
Last Book I Read – Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides
Five Books that mean a lot to me:
Now I’m supposed to tag 5 others:
Matt Fenwick
Kathy Shaidle
Kathy Kinsley
Brad Farquhar
Kevin Sinclair
You’re forgetting your complete collection of “Hustler” (if you can count those as books).
I can’t believe I forgot about Soldier of the Great War, especially after you mentioned it and the author a month ago or so. Great suggestion, Kate — one of the best novels of the twentieth century.
OK a tad off topic, but is there a concensus on the pronunciation of Ayn in Ayn Rand? Most say ‘Anne’. I have been told ‘Ain’ (rhymes with pain). Any ideas? I have a thing about names being pronounced correctly.
Victor David Hanson’s slavering lust for war is so overpowering that you really have to wonder why he doesn’t get the hell over to Baghdad himself and Get Some, as the grunts used to say in Vietnam.
(I’ve always heard “Ann” for “Ayn”. But it’s a made-up name anyway, so you can probably pronounce it however you want to.)
OK, OK. I had decided to cool my comments for a while and allow the events of the past few weeks to fade from memory before I returned, but now you’ve got me.
I have read voraciously — at least 3-4 substantial books per week — all my life, and I have read many thousands of books during that time, but Helprin’s “A Soldier of the Great War” affected me in a way that even now I have a hard time putting into words.
When a friend recommended him, it was through “A Winter’s Tale”. Although it is a beautifully written, classic Helprin book (particularly the first half) it didn’t have the strength and blinding clarity that I ultimately found in ASOTGW.
Interestingly, there are flashes of brilliance in other Helprin works, particularly in the short story collections “A Dove of the East” , “Ellis Island” and the new “Pacific”, but none evoke the emotion and power of ASOTGW. I suppose with that one he hit the nail right on the head.
If I could write and leave behind a book half as good, I would go to my grave happily, knowing that I had done some good in this life.
Like Kate, I’m also a big Rand and VDH fan.
BTW: I see Herb has resurfaced as well.
Nice to see he’s running true to form and slagging VDH. Anyone who has a beef with this sophisticated man and his well tempered, erudite observations should take a good long look in the philosophical mirror.
James Fitzjames Stephen: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (LF ed.) (1882)
About the Book
The Liberty Fund edition of this work. Impugning John Stuart Mill�s famous treatise, On Liberty, Stephen criticized Mill for turning abstract doctrines of the French Revolution into “the creed of a religion.” Only the constraints of morality and law make liberty possible, warned Stephen, and attempts to impose unlimited freedom, material equality, and an indiscriminate love of humanity will lead inevitably to coercion and tyranny.
http://www.rapp.org/url/?HMO0Y7NI
The one book that will make you think about who humans are:
“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, Walter M. Miller
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/702-9430237-1472029
First read when 14, second when 52. Just as good the second time around.
Mark
Ottawa
There’s a risk in reading Soldier – it sets the bar so high, that its hard to go back to reading other authors afterwards.
Clear,
I’m comfortable with what I see in my mirror, thanks much (especially now that I’ve started worknig out again).
I’ve read Hanson, or as much as I could stomach before I had to go wash my hands. I don’t see how anyone can deny that the basic fact about his writing is that he likes war. He thinks it’s a good thing. He thinks we should always be in it, because peace turns us into sissified namby-pambies, in love with our creature comforts.
Whereas I (and most reasonable people) think that war is sometimes a horrible necessity (1939 in Europe, 1991 in Iraq), but at all other times something any sane government would try hard to avoid. The trick is to ensure that we and the people who govern us are astute enough to be able to tell the difference.
Hanson’s view, on the other hand, boils down to: kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out.
(As for resurfacing: hey, I never went anywhere. But I did, however, come back to my computer after a long weekend to find to my chagrin that the highly enjoyable Comments section on a certain other blog had been shut down by the host because some people apparently had a problem with impulse control.)
Brian M: Ayn rhymes with “mine”. See http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=faq_index#ar_q3.
Five books I’d recommend are:
“Homage to Catalonia” — George Orwell: “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” –Alexander Solzhenitsyn; “From Dawn to Decadence” — Jacques Barzun; “The Constitution of Liberty” — Friedrich Hayek; and, “Goodbye Darkness” — William Manchester. I include the last selection because it reminds me of just how lucky I really am. Like Manchester, my father was a US Marine (1st Marine Division) during WWII. When he turned 18 he was already a veteran of Guadalcanal and would soon be badly wounded at Munda. He left the Marines, in 1945, as one of two men from his boot-camp platoon that survived the war and was one inch shorter than when he entered the service in 1942.
PS: Ignore Herb. He’s merely another leftist narcissist who craves attention, among other things.
It’s because of military historians like Hanson that the West continues to win wars.
But perhaps a compromise is in order – in the future, we can send out an advance team of Herbs to negotiate and group hug our enemies into submission.
Could we send a couple of battalions of “herbs” to Darfur?
Is there room for discussion of ‘just war’ doctrines?
Herb:
I guarantee that despite your protestations, you wouldn’t recognize a “good” war if you saw one — because as far as you’re concerned, there is no such thing as a good, or just war.
You and your mulitlateralist “Koombaya” kin would have gladly embraced Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” as a convenient excuse not to do the heavy lifting that was ultimately required to thwart the Axis horrors. But you can always be counted upon to be there for the victory celebration afterward.
It’s all very nice to say in hindsight that you agreed with WWII and Iraq 91 (left unsaid is your presumed disgust with Iraq 2002) but people like you always think we are always just a group hug away from peace.
But here’s the rub: ever notice how history has a way of proving people like you wrong?
Santayana: “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history, are doomed to repeat them.” (Insofar as those of you who figure that War is a good way to settle things- unlax! Yours is coming right up, and you won’t even have to leave the country for it.)
Done Kate, and thanks for the reminder that buying & reading books has slipped in my priorities, to a spot somewhere around vacuuming under the bed.
As an aside- were you aware that you can now buy panels, covered in wallpaper, that look like the titles of books? (Way cheaper than those matched bindings ones). Can anybody put me onto a copy of
Abdulla Alhadred’s ‘Necronomican’? You can’t miss it- it is bound in human skin.
Here I go drawing lighteningbolts again.
Were there several bloggers ganging up on Herb? Why? Right or wrong, is Herb not allowed to have an opinion?
Where is the logical argument to destroy the erroneous view?
In the hen house, the injured chicken is pecked to death by all the regular chickens.
Humans have found no advancement in that practice. I don’t care what crime Herb is guilty of.
Debate is always more fun than group attack.
Herb can speak for himself. This is just my preference in this tiny arena of blog persons.
Boy am I gonna catch it now.
73s TonyGuitar
Oh, One book that I read all the way through once. A human behavioral study. Tales of Mariposa or something by Stephen Leacock. Quite a study.
73s TG
Desert Island Reading
I’ve been tagged by Kathy via Kate so here goes. Number of books: innumerable thousands, spread over three locations (home, my parent’s home in Newfoundland, my wife’s warehouse) Last book read: Chretien Volume I – The Will To W…
A short and essential book: “Five Days in London, May 1940” by John Lukacs (Yale University Press, 1999). Very simply, what Churchill did to put himself in position to save civilization–and why Hitler had to be beaten and was, at the time, a much greater menace than the USSR.
Mark
Ottawa
Yo Tony!
I’ve never sought to “destroy the erroneous view”, a la Herb the One Trick Pony. I simply stated my belief that he should be ignored. There is a natural right to speak, but no natural right to be listened to. There is worthiness in many messages, while many others are useless tripe. True freedom allows the listener to decide which is which. Forcing or shaming any audience to expose itself to words of imposition is the work of tyrants.
TONY G:
Thanks for your considered comments.
Don’t worry, Herb is not being accused of any crime here, nor are we in danger of “pecking him to death”. IMO Herb is an intelligent fellow who is more than capable of defending himself on any issue being discussed. And if I’m not mistaken, he likes to come here and throw a few bombs in order to polish his debating chops.
My own opinions usually run counter to his, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy hearing from him or having a go at him. I’m sure most people here feel the same…
… despite the fact he’s somewhat deluded and always WRONG! 😉
My contribution would be “Human Action” by Ludwig von Mises. Explains it all but not as humuorous as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”.
Somehow it stretches the imagination to think of von Mises summing it all up as 42 — but good reference tss!
Here’s the link for ‘Human Action‘ text online for those who are curious.
Well I might just as well throw my book titles in here.
Stephen Pressfield, The Virtues of War. it’s a book about Alexander the Great, killer read BTW.
Paul Cartledge, “The Spartans” the world of the warrior heroes of ancient Greece, fairly dry scholarly work but really good at explaining the culture and chronology of the time period.
Maurice’s Strategikon, handbook of Byzantine military strategy, translated by George T. Dennis. Absolutely the best book I have read in a hell of a long time, very revealing in context of what is happening in parliament this past two months.
And lastly the most recent chapter in Jack Whyte’s Chronicle of Arthurian Britain, Clothar the Frank.
Not moderm in context but then these are just the most recent books
Daryl
No one has mentioned any of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction work. ‘The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought’ is amazing overall, and includes a great essay on the Vietnam war. ‘Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal’ and ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’ are beautiful
defenses of a free market system with individual rights.