At St John’s College there is a servitor named Shakston, a tall, thin, pale fellow, who eats spiders with as much greediness as nuts, saying they comfort his stomach.

You’re, uh, welcome.

The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, by Daisy Dunn, published 2019, biography, 295 pages. A compelling account of Pliny the Elder, who died after Vesuvius erupted, and Pliny the Younger, who later became a senator and wrote a lot of letters. Quite liked it, lots of interesting things. In reading this I realized my Italian ancestors probably lived within 100 miles of Vesuvius. (I say probably because I’ve only traced those lines back to the 1700s; I don’t actually know where they were living 1,700 years before that. Maybe nowhere near.) It includes a quote from John Aubrey about the death of Francis Bacon, which was fun since I didn’t expect to see Aubrey again so soon.

Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, by Phyllis Rose, published 1983, biography, 280 pages. Compelling short biographical portraits of the marriages of Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. The author is fairly anti-marriage (and I am not), but in spite of that I really liked the book and the stories of these five writers. I’ve read books by four of them, by the way, which may have something to do with my level of interest; I don’t know whether this book would still be interesting to someone unfamiliar with them.

Blue Nights, by Joan Didion, published 2011, memoir, 140 pages. Alas, while I’ve really liked Didion’s essays, this memoir of grief after the loss of her daughter didn’t resonate with me as I was hoping it would.

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Hitler, by Joachim C. Fest (translated by Richard and Clara Winston), published 1973, biography, 1,500 pages. After spending that much time in that headspace I felt like I needed a mental shower, but it was still worthwhile to me (I’d never read anything in depth on Hitler himself). Tragic and disturbing, as expected. Interesting how obsessed he was with people not knowing who his family was, and his mania for beating architectural records, and his plans for introducing polygamy, and all the cake gobbling in the bunker at the very end. The insomnia and keeping court all night long reminded me of Stalin. “Though later on he was always involved in close social relationships, always surrounded by a host of people, his biography is eerily empty of other human beings.” What a toll isolation — and mental illness and drugs — can take on the world. “Hardly ever has a centering of all power in a single person ended in such total and blatant disorganization.” Which sounds familiar. (As did several other things in this book. One wonders if they’re consciously cribbing or if evil is just monotonously uncreative.)

Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, published 2020, historical fiction, 390 pages. Whew. A harrowing and heavy meditation on grief, brutal knowing roughly what’s to come (the novel’s subtitle is “A Novel of the Plague”) and then stumbling through the aftermath. I cried a fair amount during the last third or so. Recommended for those in the mood. The choice not to ever mention the name Shakespeare (or even William) in the text reminded me of Wolf Hall and I felt it worked reasonably well here, too.

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, by Lucy Worsley, published 2022, biography, 440 pages. Liked it but didn’t love it. I knew Christie had been married to an archaeologist later in life but didn’t realize what a big part of her life archaeology was during those years. It had also somehow escaped me that the person who adapted her novels into plays was Christie herself. Planning to read Laura Thompson’s 2007 biography of her at some point.

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The Marne, by Edith Wharton, published 1918, fiction, 70 pages. World War I from an American perspective, and as part of that, a meditation on war. Quite liked it — one of my favorites of Wharton’s, I think. This part amused me: “Her studies had probably been curtailed by the task of preparing a repertory, for she appeared to think that Joan of Arc was a Revolutionary hero, who had been guillotined with Marie Antoinette for blowing up the Bastille; and her notions of French history did not extend beyond this striking episode.”

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, published c. 1400 (translation by Nevill Coghill published 1951), poetry, 520 pages. I didn’t love it, for the same reasons I didn’t really like The Decameron (whence several of Chaucer’s stories came from): too bawdy. Though, to his credit, Chaucer’s characterization work is much better, and the frame story has interesting detours where people interrupt and derail the order of tale telling. Even so, I’m beginning to suspect that medieval lit may not be my thing after all, which comes as a surprise to me.

Unto This Last, by John Ruskin, published 1862, essays, 100 pages. Interesting essays on political economy, touching on ethical, humane economics. Some interesting ideas, like equality of wages regardless of aptitude (which seems kind of crazy but was still interesting to think about). And then I got to the end of third essay where Ruskin drops this: “My continual aim has been to show the eternal superiority of some men to others, sometimes even of one man to all others.” Ugh. Plop goes Ruskin into the interesting-yet-problematic bucket. But other than that it was worth reading. Some passages that stood out to me:

Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour’s pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it—and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist’s sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor.

And this:

And whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

And:

Consider whether, even, supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world.

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Classics: A Very Short Introduction, by Mary Beard & John Henderson, published 2000, history, 98 pages. It was good for its length and scope, with the temple at Bassae as the entry point for several of the topics. My favorite parts, I think, were those showing what types of discussions classicists often engage in. I also have not thought nearly enough about how slavery in Greece and Rome affected the ancient world.

Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, by Eric Foner, published 2002, essays, 249 pages. Foner is a historian of Reconstruction (or at least started as one) but these essays cover more ground — social Darwinism, South Africa, freedom in the U.S., originalism and the Supreme Court’s racism in recent decades, the historiographic weakness of the final episode of the Ken Burns Civil War miniseries, etc. I liked it. A couple passages that stuck with me:

We can forget the past, but the past, most assuredly, will not forget us. The experience of dead generations, Karl Marx once wrote, “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”

And:

The price of maintaining freedom, as an Irish judge commented two centuries ago, is “eternal vigilance.”

Biography: A Very Short Introduction, by Hermione Lee, published 2009, nonfiction, 140 pages. Focused mostly on literary biography. I very much enjoyed it and emerged with many more books added onto my to-read list. (Though one that did not get added to my list was Boswell’s Johnson, because I’m already reading it. Around 10% of the way in and I’m loving it. It’s so good.) Also, I did not know that Henry James and Edith Wharton toured France together in 1907.

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Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published 1841/1844 (in two volumes), nonfiction, 502 pages. Lots of interesting ideas. I’m glad I read it, but by the end his manner of stating things very confidently became grating and I was equally glad to be done. It might have been better if I’d spaced the essays out over time instead of gulping them down all at once. Still, worth reading.

Days of Shattered Faith, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, published 2025, fantasy, 659 pages. Third in the Tyrant Philosophers series. Really liked it, as always. The world continues to be compelling and these books are among Tchaikovsky’s best, I think.

Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution, by Ruth Scurr, published 2006, biography, 533 pages. As the subtitle indicates, this is a worthwhile look at the French Revolution by way of Robespierre. Before reading this (and I haven’t read much about the French Revolution, to be clear), my perception of Robespierre was heavily on the villain side of things, but the book provides a more three-dimensional view while also avoiding turning into an apologia for murder. For example, I hadn’t known that in his younger days Robespierre argued against the death penalty and defended the poor. I also hadn’t realized he was guillotined at only thirty-six years old. So young! Unwilling to admit he was wrong, unable to separate himself from the Revolution, it’s a sad story.

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Havana: A Subtropical Delirium, by Mark Kurlansky, published 2017, nonfiction, 202 pages. I went into this having liked Kurlansky’s Cod, but alas, this one didn’t work as well for me. (I stuck with it because one of my family lines is from Cuba and I want to know more about the history and culture there.) I did enjoy reading about Cuban post-embargo constraint-driven creativity and ingenuity, and I didn’t know the sloppy joe originated in Havana, nor that Habaneros apparently hate the sea, because loved ones leave by it and because new people (invaders, historically) arrive by it.

Bunner Sisters, by Edith Wharton, published 1916, fiction, 117 pages. About two sisters, Ann Eliza and Evelina, and Mr. Ramy the clockmaker. Darker than I expected going in, with some unexpected choices by the characters. Liked it. My plan right now, by the way, is to finish up Wharton’s novellas first and then read her novels in chronological order.

A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, by Amy S. Greenberg, published 2013, history, 461 pages. Quite good. I read this because one of my ancestors fought in the war and I realized I knew almost nothing about it. It would, I think, do most Americans good to learn more about the war (whether through this book or elsewhere), to better understand some of the costs of manifest destiny and the annexations that led to the geography we have today. (Saying this as someone who lives in territory seized during the conflict.) I agree that it was a wicked, unjust war, and for me there were several echoes with our current war du jour — a war of aggression sparked by lies, for example, and weak-willed people in Congress mumbling that we simply have to support the president’s war if it’s already been started (balderdash). I have no strong feelings about this, clearly. In the book it was also fascinating to see how the Mexican–American War functioned as prologue to the Civil War, and Lincoln’s part in protesting it. Recommended.

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The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, published 1610, play, 66 pages. This was the Shakespeare play I’d been looking forward to the most, because I’d never read it before but had seen several references to it over the years. It did not disappoint. (Though Julius Caesar remains my favorite, I think.)

The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, by Jeffrey Rosen, published 2024, history, 382 pages. Delighted to read that many/most of those involved in the Founding were voracious readers, though in hindsight I suppose it could be more surprising that any were not. Regardless, my main goal in reading this book was to come out with a list of older books and authors I want to read next, like Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, and I now have that list. But do I have sufficient time? Aye, there’s the rub.

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph J. Ellis, published 2000, history, 418 pages. Fascinating detail into different parts of the Founding — the Hamilton v. Burr duel, the postponing of discussions about slavery, Washington’s farewell address, the troubled friendship between Jefferson and Adams, the split between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian views of government that still causes issues today, etc. This won the Pulitzer. Really liked it — on its own merits, not because of the award — and recommend it. And no, I didn’t read either of these last two books because of the 250th, though the timing certainly looks suspect.

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Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam, by Brian VanDeMark, published 2018, history, 763 pages. Really liked it. It’s a history of Vietnam up until LBJ leaves office, including a bit at the beginning on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis (useful context for the early decisions both Kennedy and McNamara were making), looking in particular at the various cognitive blind spots that led smart people to make poor decisions throughout the war. Recommended. Also: war is evil.

Père Goriot, by Honoré de Balzac, published 1835, translated 1890s by Ellen Marriage, fiction, 383 pages. My first time reading Balzac. Shallow society, lots of unhappy marriages and surface-level affairs. And yet in spite of all that (which to be fair is only a small part of the novel), I quite liked the book and found myself looking forward to picking it up again each day. I don’t know that I’ll read his whole Human Comedy — there are a lot of volumes — but a few more, certainly.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, by John Matteson, published 2007, biography, 684 pages. Quite good. Compelling and readable. Bronson was an odd character, egotistical (“my genius is epic” — who says that?!) and weird (the whole Fruitlands episode, for example), with some obsessive journaling on parenthood. “Bronson desperately wanted to cure Louisa’s seemingly innate violence. In his records, he fretted endlessly over her fierce will and volcanic temper.” She was two or three at the time, if I recall correctly. Ha. Emerson and Thoreau show up fairly often, which was fun. On the less fun side of things, I hadn’t known about Louisa’s disability and health issues that seriously affected her last couple decades. Another casualty of the Civil War. And of course it was interesting to see which parts of Little Women were more autobiographical. Speaking of that and, more candidly, of the trail of deaths of her family toward the end of the book: biographies often leave me with a feeling I don’t get from any other kind of book, the feeling that a friend has died.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Elizabeth Gaskell (who was six years older than Charlotte and was her friend), published 1857, biography, 684 pages. So good. Tragedy after tragedy, though, with her mother dying at age 39, her two oldest sisters dying at ages 11 and 12, and then, later on, Branwell, Emily, and Anne all dying within eight months of each other at ages 31, 30, and 29, and Charlotte herself dying a few years after that at age 38 while pregnant. The father outlived them all and made it to age 84. A family haunted by death. My wife’s ancestors, by the way, were from Keighley and Haworth, and we visited Haworth as a family a few years ago, so it was fun to read about it. Except that Haworth back then was a bit of a death trap: “And thus we find that illness often assumed a low typhoid form in Haworth, and fevers of various kinds visited the place with sad frequency.” The autobiographical elements of Jane Eyre were striking — I didn’t realize Helen Burns was basically her older sister Maria. Or how her father’s near-blindness and her own extreme nearsightedness surely led to all the references to sight and eyes. The biography includes lots of letters, which I found very effective in drawing me into Charlotte’s world. Some passages that give a feel for the book, and the first two are Charlotte’s words:

A bereavement of this kind gives one a glimpse of the feeling those must have, who have seen all drop round them—friend after friend, and are left to end their pilgrimage alone.

And:

For my part, I am free to walk on the moors; but when I go out there alone, everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I dare not read it, and am driven often to wish I could taste one draught of oblivion, and forget much that, while mind remains, I never shall forget. Many people seem to recall their departed relatives with a sort of melancholy complacency, but I think these have not watched them through lingering sickness, nor witnessed their last moments: it is these reminiscences that stand by your bedside at night, and rise at your pillow in the morning. At the end of all, however, exists the Great Hope. Eternal Life is theirs now.

And:

Some one conversing with her once objected, in my presence, to that part of Jane Eyre in which she hears Rochester’s voice crying out to her in a great crisis of her life, he being many, many miles distant at the time. I do not know what incident was in Miss Brontë’s recollection when she replied, in a low voice, drawing in her breath, “But it is a true thing; it really happened.”

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Foster, by Claire Keegan, published 2010, fiction, 34 pages. I normally try not to read books from the same author in such close temporal proximity, but this came in on hold and it’s so short. (I love short books.) (I also love long books.) (I just really love books.) Keegan’s writing continues to bewitch my brain.

Penric’s Fox, by Lois McMaster Bujold, published 2017, fantasy, 144 pages. Part of the Penric & Desdemona series. A murder mystery this time, and I liked it a lot, as always with Bujold.

Piers Plowman, by William Langland, published 1370s, poetry, 337 pages. I read this in Middle English (which I took a class in back in my undergrad days) with no aids, to see what it would be like. While it was fun, I sadly came out of it retaining very little, even though at the line level I kept feeling like I was comprehending everything well enough. I’ve also learned that allegories are not really my thing. Loved the crazy Middle English orthographic diversity and the utter avalanche of biblical Latin quotes, though.

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