102 Books In 2011

Well, my final count for books completed in 2011 is 102. That is, 40 paper books, 13 e-books, and 49 audio books.

Last year, I completed 56 books. I initially made it my goal to completed 75-85 this year.

Here are the books I completed separated out by paper, audio, and e-book categories (and in no particular order):

Paper Books

  1. Christ and Culture Revisited by D.A. Carson
  2. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien / Christopher Tolkien
  3. The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien / Christopher Tolkien
  4. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Man Who Created the Lord of the Rings by Michael Coren
  5. J.R.R. Tolkien by Catharine Stimpson (48 pages)
  6. Mobsters & Rumrunners of Canada: Crossing the Line by Gord Steinke
  7. A World Lost By Wendell Berry
  8. The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
  9. High Performance Websites by Steve Sauders
  10. The Little Box by Vasko Popa
  11. My Town: The Faces of Windsor by Marty Gervais
  12. Best Tales of the Yukon by Robert Service
  13. The triumph of narrative: Storytelling in the age of mass culture by Robert Fulford
  14. Birding at Point Pelee by Henrietta O’Neil
  15. In The Interlude by Boris Pasternak.
  16. Thank You, Wodehouse by J.H.C. Morris
  17. Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
  18. What is a Healthy Church? by Mark Dever
  19. By Whose Authority? Elders in Baptist Life by Mark Dever
  20. The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever
  21. Glory Road: The Journeys of 10 African-Americans into Reformed Christianity ed. by  Anthony J. Carter
  22. Improving Your Quiet Time by Simon Robinson
  23. Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
  24. Black Fugitive Slaves in Early Canada by Linda Bramble
  25. Essex County sketches by Essex County Ontario Tourist Association
  26. The three Rs of Essex: Riches, rags, recovery by Evelyn Couch Walker
  27. Pierre Viret: A Forgotten Giant of the Reformation by Jean-Marc Berthoud
  28. Blue Ice by Frank Ewert
  29. Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm by Daniel Leab
  30. Shooting An Elephant and Other Essays by George Orwell
  31. Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting by Marva Dawn
  32. Seeing Reds: The Red Scare of 1918-1919: Canada’s First War on Terror by Daniel Francis
  33. Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada’s Most Notorious Bootlegger by Antonia Nicaso
  34. Wild Goose Jack: Jack Miner’s Autobiography by Jack Miner
  35. Anabaptism: Neither Catholic Nor Protestant by Walter Klassen
  36. Calvin by Bruce Gordon
  37. Dostoievsky by C.M. Woodhouse
  38. Pierced by the Word:  Thirty-One Meditations for your Soul  by John Piper
  39. Standing on the Promises: A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing  by Douglas Wilson
  40. The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophesy by Iain Murray

Electronic Books (Kindle, Overdrive, PDF, Text, etc.)

  1. Far Above Rubies by George MacDonald
  2. Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages by Leland Gregory
  3. Tahn by L.A. Kelly
  4. Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke
  5. Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Lemoncelli
  6. Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism by Joel Beeke
  7. Why & What: Second Thoughts on the Christian Message by Douglas Jones
  8. Fyodor Dostoevsky by Peter Leithart
  9. The Sabbath in Puritan New England by Alice Morse Earle
  10. A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity by R.C. Sproul
  11. Keach’s Catechism by Bejamin Keach
  12. Spy Killer by L. Ron Hubbard
  13. Rework by Jason Fried

Audio Books (MP3, CD)

  1. Dostoevsky in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern
  2. Assasination Vacation by Sarah Vowel
  3. Love Wins by Rob Bell
  4. Tulipomania : The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by Mike Dash
  5. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation  by Steven Johnson
  6. Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life by Gaile Blanke
  7. American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood by Marc Elliot
  8. Catholic Truth in History by  G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and James Welsh
  9. Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen
  10. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig
  11. I’m Not Going To Get Up Today by Dr. Seuss
  12. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
  13. The Left, The Right, and The State by Lew Rockwell
  14. Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
  15. Eggs, Beans and Crumpets by P.G. Wodehouse
  16. Their Mutual Child by P.G. Wodehouse
  17. The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today by  Theresa Flores
  18. The Dubliners by James Joyce
  19. A Short History of the United States by Edward Channing
  20. The Price of Everything: Solving The Mystery of Why We Pay What We Pay by  Eduardo Porter
  21. Never Hit A Jellyfish With A Spade by Guy Browning
  22. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
  23. The Wise Woman by George MacDonald
  24. The Shadows by George MacDonald
  25. The Rats by James Herbert
  26. For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
  27. Carpe Diem: Put A Little Latin in Your Life by Harry Mount
  28. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
  29. Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
  30. The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes
  31. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  32. Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
  33. Arguably by Christopher Hitchens
  34. Mankind in the Making by H.G. Wells
  35. History of the Christian Church During The First Six Centuries by Samuel Cheetham
  36. The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
  37. What’s Wrong With The World by G.K. Chesteron
  38. The Importance of Christian Scholarship by J. Gresham Machen
  39. The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand
  40. The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl
  41. A History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield
  42. Two tactics of social-democracy in the democratic revolution by Vladimir Lenin
  43. The Barber Who Wanted to Pray by R.C. Sproul
  44. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  45. Homeage to Catalonia by George Orwell
  46. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
  47. Brief History of English and American Literature by Henry Beers
  48. Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood
  49. Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement by Henry Beers

 

Obama – The Centrist Republican

Glenn Greenwald hit the ball out of the park with his recent article at The Guardian. I have never seen a political article in a long time that has so hit the nail right on its head as this one has.

In essence, Glenn argues that Obama has governed so much from the mainstream Republican perspective in areas of foreign policy, wall street, corporatism, etc., that he has essentially taken much of the steam out of the Republican momentum. He says that the Republicans current dilemma is “how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party’s defining beliefs”.  On the issue of corporatism, he asks “How do you scorn a president as a far-left socialist when he has stuffed his administration with Wall Street executives, had his last campaign funded by them…?”

Like it or not, Glenn is basically right. For instance, on the matters of foreign policy, for all their yaking about being different than Obama, the GOP front runners (except for Ron Paul) basically offer a hearty “Amen! And do more of that!” to Obama’s foreign policy. When the question becomes, for instance, Obama’s habits on assassination, the majority of GOP contenders in the debates instantly become staunch defenders of Obama.

Here is a gem of a quote from the article:

  • “It is in the realm of foreign policy, terrorism and civil liberties where Republicans encounter an insurmountable roadblock. A staple of GOP politics has long been to accuse Democratic presidents of coddling America’s enemies…being afraid to use violence, and subordinating US security to international bodies and leftwing conceptions of civil liberties. But how can a GOP candidate invoke this…when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush’s terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorised war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process? Reflecting this difficulty for the GOP field is the fact that former Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, have taken to lavishing Obama with public praise for continuing his predecessor’s once-controversial terrorism polices. In the last GOP foreign policy debate, the leading candidates found themselves issuing recommendations on the most contentious foreign policy question (Iran) that perfectly tracked what Obama is already doing, while issuing ringing endorsements of the president when asked about one of his most controversial civil liberties assaults…..The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied. They are forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd.”

Booklog (December 23 – December 30, 2011)

In this period I’ve completed:

  • Arguably by Christopher Hitchens (audiobook, print is 816 pages):  A massive collection of essays on literature, foreign policy, and other topics. It’s not at all dull, but you will find it a massive plow unless you have a great deal of stamina. Being quite spunky and animated, as one has come to expect from Hitchens, you’ll never end up thinking “What does Hitchens really think?” There’s a little something something in here to ruffle everyones feathers.  Every time I read something by Hitchens, I’m impressed but what a great author he was and how similar his prose is to Orwell and how I can’t think of more than one or two people who touch him nowadays when it comes to the turning of words. Going through this book at this time was a sobering experience, seeing how Hitchens has gone on to meet his Maker. The world has lost a great essayist.
  • Thank You, Wodehouse by J.H.C. Morris (152 pages): See my review.

This places the running total for books(*)  completed in 2011 at 102.

* Note: I regard paper, audio, and electronic books to be rightfully considered books.

A Review of Thank You, Wodehouse by J.H.C. Morris

Here is my review of Thank You, Wodehouse by J.H.C. Morris

I am quite impressed with this book, even though it may not be the sort of work that would deserve a place in the highest levels of literary criticism. J.H.C. Morris (and occasionally A.D. Macintyre) explore the world and characters created by P.G. Wodehouse with a considerable amount of gusto and skill.  There is a marked comfort here with “rolling up ones sleeves” and getting to work.

Morris has succeeded in making literary criticism funny as he examines the canon with a fine tooth comb and weighs the evidence to come to fascinating conclusions. There is a healthy balance between vigorous, serious scholarship and lighthearted joviality. The methodology is markedly deductive and the author is constantly harmonizing (and sometimes showing contradictions between) the various books in the Wodehouse canon. You will find some speculation, but usually it only appears when well grounded inferences simply cannot be made.

The best way I can describe this book is to say that it’s as if P.G. Wodehouse were commissioned from his grave to write a book of literary criticism about his own books. And it applies the sort of thorough, exploratory, and detailed approach that has been utilizing in the criticism of other literature (such as the Sherlock Holmes canon).

I also wish to share some of the flaws that I’ve found in this book.

First, It should be stated that the author is too hard on Jeeves, seeing in him nothing but an evil “domestic tyrant” and the blackest fiend to be found in English literature. While Jeeves is certainly not a totally saintly character, I find this over-representation of the unseemly aspects of his character to be a regrettable blot an otherwise fine work.

Second, another complaint I would have is that the ending is quite abrupt, with precious little at the end in the way of a conclusion to tie it all together.

Third, it takes the reader into some very deep water that might make all but the most obsessive Wodehouse fans quiver a bit. If you haven’t read over 10 or 20 Wodehouse books, you’ll probably find yourself slightly disoriented at certain points.

Out And About 12/30/2011

Book Reviews

Theology

Foreign Policy

Holiday Book Splurge

I’ve went out a couple times and purchased some used books. I considered it to have been a success. In two trips, I spent $15.23.

All in all, I got 3 books for myself and 2 for my daughter.

  • A volume in the Oxford History of English Literature series, English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century 1700-1740 by Bonamy Dobree
  • Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  • A beautiful edition of Roughing It by Mark Twain
  • Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton
  • I Am NOT Going To Get Up Today by Dr. Seuss

 

Out And About 12/28/2011

Music

Politics

Oh, Canada

Technology

Wildlife