I think I read and hear enough on all these topics without have to inflict more abuse on myself by reading entire books on them. Instead I have been fleshing out the gaps in my science-focused education by reading the classics I never had time to read before. Dostoyevsky. My God, he is brilliant. Kafka. Go beyond Metamorphosis. Read The Trial. Wow. The Master and Marguerita. Wild. (get the Cliff Notes, you’ll need them).Read some books on areas of history that were ignored in school. The Byzantine Empire, the Middle East before Mohammad, the life of Paul and the early church fathers, whatever interests you. Reading is time to escape from all the madness.
I am with you NC. I feel daily informed on most of these authors ideas and books.
Read Crime and Punishment this year. The Master and Margarita last (wild is an understatement!). Next this year is Heart of Darkness along with Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment) for fun.
I plowed through. And yes, JP was reason I read it. A satire against the communist regime in Soviet Union. I finished w/o a clue. I sure wouldn’t fault you for not finishing!!
thanks! I'd like to read Crime and Punishment as well, reading Gulag Archepelago, but have to put it down occasionally as it's so heavy! thanks for your note!
I read Dostoyevski's The Prisoner this year. After the Trial, you'll never wan to enter a courtroom. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Dante, from the frontispiece of The Trial. To understand the Arab mind; T.E. Lawrence; The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
I will die for my children then my religion then America
I believe I used Muslims
Since their philosophy is convert or die
I do not care about complexities.
It is simple there are 30 Muslim countries at war against Israel since 1947. But America has done little to stop their war. Out of the top 50 countries that persecute Christians I believe 45 are Muslim countries.
80000 blacks have been killed and 42000 Christians have been killed since 2009 in Nigeria
Dio you give a shit!.
150000 Muslims have been killed by Muslims in Yemen
Do you give a shit?
Iran has called for the destruction of America
Why do you not take it seriously?
America has been invaded
The BDS are military cells
And hate the Jew is really disinformation and distraction for this invasion
Why do you think that I don't take the Iranian threat seriously?
I don't know what the BDS is.
Now there are groups of Black people who are using the Jews as a scapegoat for their faliures. Are these Black people part of the invasion?
If I worried about everyone in the world who's been killed, that's all I'd have time to think about, and as I enter the last stage of my life I prefer to spend my time thinking about other things.
My only point was your claim that "Americans are too scared to die for anything," and I disagree with that.
Dear Flatware Person. I think this reply is correct on so many levels.
Dear Bernie Davis. If you did indeed serve then perhaps you don't understand what you did, what you agreed to when you took the oath. Allow me to interpret from my perspective. When I took that oath I did so with this understanding. The words aren't mine but upon hearing these words the truth of the concept was a sobering epiphany. "When you swear that oath you are writing the Government of the United States a blank check redeemable with everything your are and up to and including your life".
I took the oath. The oath includes a provision to defend the constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. Now what if the enemy of the constitution is the misguided and cabal of communists who have wend their way into power? There is no time limitation on that oath. Oh Dear.
“BDS stands for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction. The BDS movement works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law.”
That’s from the BDS movement’s website. They try to get entities like businesses, corporations and universities to boycott anything Israeli, divest/not invest in Israeli businesses and for governments to issue sanctions against Israel for oppressing the Palestinians. Before Oct 7th college students liked to march around campus with BDS signs from time to time. Other people periodically march outside corporate headquarters with BDS signs to get them not to do business with Israel. It’s a thing.
FWIW, my aging feet hurt like crazy except when I wear NAOT sandals and shoes. NAOT products are made in Israel and I intend to buy them every chance I get, and I hope they never go out of business. Foot comfort is my political line that I will not cross.
Good grief, paraphrasing this comment and those following: "what am I willing to DIE for?’
Don’t you know dying is easy - just stand there, do nothing, die.
I’m more concerned about what you’re willing to kill for/about?
What’s that, did I just hear someone sucking in their breath? Did you do so when you read "willing to die for?"
If you truly believe in a cause, say freedom, liberty, justice, western thought - what would your death do to advance those?
16M men (and some women) mobilized TO KILL from USofA "to save the world." And we (WE) did.
Frankly, I think today’s westerner has been so brainwashed with the collective gobbledygook of modern passivity that all you can do IS die - let someone else do the hard stuff. Problem is, there ain’t enough of the "someone elses" to maintain your milk&honey pacifist mindset and life style.
Was it not General Patton who said that the idea was not to die for your country so much as to have the other SOB die for his? (Delicacy not his strong point...)
I am not saying that the demoralization described in this podcast is intentional, but I do think that the program presented is useful to learn from. People who are taught to hate their own country will not defend it. If we find and found competitive educational institutions and good leaders generally step up now we are still 15-20 years from fixing the brain rot by replacement. https://www.youtube.com/live/ud6b3hOAsb0?si=jhJR8y1owWu_E9hR
NCMaureen, I'm with YOU! I get enough depressing stuff from various sources, so when I read I like to escape reality for a while. Dostoyevsky may be your "cup of tea", but for me he is too moralizing to be enjoyable. Never read Kafka, so I guess I must try him out. I much more like historical fiction, Science Fiction, and various titles whose reviews intrigued me. Nothing on the above list appeals to me.
(Time to throw out the anchor... late to the party; surgery this time.) I courteously read through the entire list and likewise concluded that there was nothing worth so large a fraction of my expected life (at 76) to read. My sense is that the selection is skewed in the same manner as is TFP in general: Flashes of enlightenment of persons unwilling to let go. (Eg, do I really need a bunch of hours to know that two-parent (specifically one man + one woman) families are -- literally -- God's way to go? Or that "gender services" is academic cant for "evil?")Furthermore: Those entire books of which you speak, when not blindingly obvious to Most of Us are, by virtue of present technology, somewhere between obsolescent and wholly worthless before they even make it past the typesetter. Concur with your reversion to classics -- they're classics for a reason. Be well...
I agree,Maureen. I get a lot from most of the authors mentioned by listening to Honestly, also Megyn Kelly's show in which she has interviewed several of them. Your reading list is impressive.
My favorite books in 2023 are quite different from the Free Press list. I added them to my long and rapidly expanding wish list for 2024.
My absolute favorite book (in terms of excitement, adventure, daring) for 2023 is The Incredible Life of Hubert Wilkins by Peter FitzSimons. I absolutely could not stop reading it.
The most depressing and emotionally draining was Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. It's a must read account of WW2, from the German perspective.
For a riveting account of 17t h century barbarism, murder, and cruelty, there is nothing quite like Batavia by Peter FitzSimons.
It's kind of lonely just reading old books. I think it'll be exciting to read these suggested books and feel more in the loop. Like watching a new TV show alongside the old classics.
A most dreary reading list, yes , full agreement with your above suggestions. So much that must be read in this all too short allotment of Fates' twine.
i also agree with you NC…i have focused on the Revolutionary War period, specifically about the creation of the Constitution…i felt it important to understand anew why our way if life is worth defending…it was illuminating to read that the political discord of the late 1790’s and early 1800’s sounded eerily like the US post 2016...
I have also been reading first person accounts of important periods in history…WWI, 1930’s Germany, and WWII are current interests…these books put the reader on the ground seeing things from the perspective of people in the middle of events…a perspective not given by the traditional recorders of history…g.
Yes, Franz Kafka is good, especially when you're in the mood for something weird and depressing. In addition to "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial", I enjoyed (if that's the right word) "In the Penal Colony", "Amerika", and "A Hunger Artist".
I think there is no more prescient novel for today than The Trial. Guilty until proven innocent. Guilty of what? Doesn’t really matter, the faceless State has already decided guilty.
Interesting list, NC. I read a book that might be a description of the precursor to our madness - American Prometheus, The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - a superb, dense and harrowing account about a time when elite minds were still held in high esteem, yet vulnerable to the first seeds of cancel culture and public vilification.
“Because this past year might have been a bad year for the Middle East, for freedom of speech, for FTX, for House Republicans”
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I do love that there is an Official State Narrative that everyone is running with about how House Republicans were in chaos this year because they actually, for once, tried to maneuver around the unremitting extortion racket where a bunch of parasites and oligarchs write a 3,000 page $7 trillion budget in the back room and then bring it out at the last minute and force everyone to sign it at gunpoint which totally defeats the purpose of having a democracy.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. She is what we think we elect when we vote for our representative to the House. Someone who cares about our interests and will fight for them. Someone who won’t be bought by lobbyists. Someone who speaks the truth. Instead they fold like cheap suits and then send us emails explaining their vote and asking for money. So she has to be vilified, called a laughing stock. I like her chutzpah.
Right…don’t admit that you like MTG to friends and family. For that matter, same goes for Tucker. They’ll likely laugh in your face unless they feel the same. I like both because they speak confidently about the lies and corruption going on by our ridiculous politicians who’d rather make spectacles of themselves than make things better for this mess called the USA! Liking them may make me look like an idiot, but I confidently don’t care anymore!
But those "Jewish space lasers...." I was curious as to what MTG actually said. And, just as I figured, she never said those words. Just like Trump never said that the Charlottesville tiki marchers were "good people." Our friends in the leftist media send lies twice around the world before the truth can lace its boots.
This is interesting because, at least NY Mag had the decency to put up Greene's entire twitter quote. Most never do. Note she never uses the term "Jewish Space Lasers." As you can see, there's some clever conflation on the part of the authors linking the meme of the Rothschild bankers and anti-Semitism. Now you can raise an eyebrow over Greene's twitter post (I did) but note that she never used the term and her post was not really about a Jewish conspiracy. I looked because I saw her interview with Tucker Carlson, expecting a bit of a lunatic. But most of what she said made sense as an indictment of the DC uniparty.
I got banned from social events for just voting Trump, I never ventured onto MTG or House Speaker Johnson. I like you confidently don’t care wanna go for coffee Linda😄😄
On an adjacent note, reportedly 49% of the "new jobs" (job growth being Exhibit "A" in the economy is great mis-, dis- and/or malinformation lottery) is in the government sector.
“But he’s not surprised by this. “To be an American radical,” he writes, “is to grow used to failure.” In order to make change happen, he argues, you have to struggle and battle and never give up.”
———————————————————-
Imagine if these effing douche bags never gave up battling and struggling to improve *themselves*, personally, instead of trying to reorder the entire planet and usher in pansexual intergalactic vegan communism. Nope. Can’t do that. Gotta be a busybody utopian dickwad. FFS.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Ahh, Ed Anger. Coiner of the term "Broccoli Bruces".
John Waters wrote that the guy behind Ed Anger was totally doing a Wally George/Morton Downey Jr shtick, but man, he was "wtf the hell did I just read???" funny.
Ah-- I don't remember "Broccoli Bruces" but I'll check it out! Also Wally George/ Morton Downey Jr. schtick. If John Waters says it- it must be fact!!!
I wish P'Lod would come back and give advice to the Biden White House like he used to for Clinton!!!
I’ll schedule an unsedated colonoscopy before ever again reading the Free Press’s favorite Marxist Freddie deBoering. He provided the Free Press’s worst essay in 2023. If after the 20th century you still call yourself a Marxist you have more than mental health problems Freddie.
I actually read the book in my commitment to confronting leftists and their ideas. It was enjoyable for the parts that skewed progressives but wow that guy has no idea how the world works. He worked for like two years and now he wants to tear down capitalism. Another innumerate socialist.
Two things, one is that there is no time in which you should take what a Marxist has to say seriously. Ever. The other thing is it would be really great if you learned who Thomas Sowell is.
In these very turbulent years, a friend introduced me to David McCullough’s books. I read history of the formation of our great nation that I never got in school. I read “John Adams” and it was like hearing our founding fathers first hand accounts. It was followed by “1776” and the military miracle that George Washington led to while “learning on the job”. We cannot lose what was given to us by great men who were all different but agreed to form this nation.
I agree about David McCullough, and also like Stephen Ambrose as a “popular,” i.e., non-academic historian. If you want a non-Marxist condensed history of the U.S., get Land of Hope, by Professor Wilfred McClay, formerly at Univ. of Oklahoma.
Finally, for a riveting popular history of WWII and its prelude, by all means get The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, by Herman Wouk. Those two books read quickly. And you will forever be able to speak knowledgeably about The Holocaust. Enthusiastically recommended!
A friend of mine starting tracking the books he read on Facebook a year or two ago, and I liked the idea so I copied it. It makes it easy to look back on what you have read. I've read 21 books this year, the last being Brave New World, which I had never read. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it. It's less blatantly dystopian than you may suppose, and actually quite close to the reality of reasonably well off middle class Americans, who, as he says, really have no complaints that would give them cause to WANT to read deep literature.
Those who read ANY books are already an elite in this country, as far as I can tell.
And I will suggest to those of you who are on the road a lot that you get the CD player working in your vehicle, and visit your local library, which has hundreds of COMPLETELY FREE very good books ready to be checked out. I actually listened to, rather than read, Brave New World (and many others, including Don Quixote, and four books by Dickens).
The tide seems to be, if not turning, at least pausing a little in its urgent advance. That is something. There is sanity and rest in pause. It is a mark of genuine progress for each of us to realize we are confused, to look to the right and see confusion, look to the left and see confusion, and to start to move more carefully and thoughtfully. By and large people who cannot conceive of themselves committing an error do little else but make mistakes, which they then compound rather than decipher, over and over.
The speed of books is appropriate for human life. The speed of the internet is not.
I personally cannot do this, but Son E, who is a wizard, had me buy him a thingie in the electronics department at Walmart for about $20, and he did it.
You may have seen earlier -- it's one of my recurring nightmares; that we've changed our environment so much so quickly that we no longer are suitable for it.
It is possible to link your accounts together. I've done that, so that when I write a review on my Kindle app, the review also posts to Goodreads. But you don't have to link them.
I get the annoyance at Amazon, but they haven't managed to offend me to the point that I'm willing to surrender the convenience yet. Free shipping (with Prime) is a pretty big deal to me, especially with the way postal rates have gone up. And since we live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I often order things I can't buy locally.
It's heartening to say the least that criticism of the Sexual Revolution (Louise Perry) and the single mom craze (Melissa Kearny) are making it into the mainstream. I have been trying to discuss these issues with my useful idiot friends for ages and of course they brush it all off as if I turned "right wing." (As if that were a bigger problem than cutting off my son's penis -- if I had a son -- indeed, I followed the narrative off a cliff myself, hence my criticism of said narratives...)
But this line of fear-- which is always uttered as if it's great wisdom -- is just plain DUMB and I hope never to hear it again as if it's to be taken seriously:
"Melissa isn’t interested in shame and blame or in a return to the 1950s."
QUELLE HORROR! Returning to the 50s! One of the most affluent decades in American history! Sure, it was CONFORMIST...isn't that IRONIC? The very arbiters of conforming to bad ideas today are so worried about conforming to traditional, family values of the past to the point where "returning to the 50s" has become synonymous with Sharia law or something.
And on that note...someone in my Instagram feed is promoting "The world is becoming more Palestinian by the day..." SOUNDS WORSE THAN THE 50s...
Those who react to the thought of the 1950s with horror are (ironically) the same people who conform to every single woke “cause” of the moment, which they enthusiastically “enforce” with a McCarthy-esque rigor. But they are willfully blind to their own witch-hunts...it’s always “the other side” who are the oppressors.
As an avid reader of books, I have always had a mix of history, business, and literature. As I read the titles, nothing jumps out to me to buy and read. The only person I have purchased and read who is still living is Jordan Peterson's two most recent books. I always love to read Robert Greene. One thing I started doing this year was reading books; I read 20 years ago as I am a much different person, so I read it for the first time.
I would love to hear from some people about the % of your intellectual diet. Podcast, Youtube vs. Reading. Then, when you read, is it newsletters, websites, books, or newspapers? For me. I am a good mix of books ( I love American and Ancient history), newsletters, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. How about you?
I have read everything James Michener since I was a young teen. Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization, Leon Uris, James Clavell. On Spirituality, Cynthia Bourgeault, Ilia Delio, CS Lewis (Perelandra, my all-time favorite), Lao Tzu, Don Miguel Ruiz. Podcasts today: Lex Fridman, Coleman Hughes, Honestly, Joe Rogan, Efrat Fenigson, UnHerd, All In, Aubrey Marcus, John Anderson. I skim newspaper headlines but generally do without. Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, Peter Zeihan, The Free Press.
WHen I was younger, I bought the leather bound edition of Will and Ariel Duran'ts Story of Civilization. That is a huge undertaking to read but each New years, I always want to tackle it. Thanks for sharing.
My greatest reading challenge was to tackle "The Rise and Fall OF The Third Reich". It took two years of intermittent reading to do it, but it was an education that I missed in high school and college. It helped explain to me many of the tactics used by politicians today, and I'm not speaking of Orange Man Bad!
I bought Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon and that was interesting as it was easy to read and grasp. I can still vividly remember the section on Catholic Church telling rich widows they didn't need their gold to get itno heaven while they built magestic building and lived lavishly. Human nature never changes.
I bought The Name of the Rose when it first came out because it was the thing to do. During the pandemic when our stupid far left wing mayor closed the library I decided to tackle it. What a dense wordy door stop. I think I got about twenty pages in.
Oh! I had forgotten that one. I did the same thing you did--got the book because it was all the rage (and there was a decent movie made from the core narrative) and couldn't get past a few pages. However, I remember being pleasantly surprised by "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," another trendy book of the 70's.
I read constantly (the looks of my house and yard reflect that). Seldom do podcasts or videos (5-minute videos on PragerU are an exception.) Daily routine of The Free Press, allsides.com, realclearpolitics.com, wattsupwiththat.com and Babylon Bee. For pleasure, I read the Dresden Chronicles by Dan Butcher (modern fantasy), the Walt Longmire novels of Craig Johnson and Joe Pickett novels of C.J. Box (both mysteries set in Wyoming) and the Chet and Bernie novels by Spencer Quinn (comic mysteries narrated by a dog).
I might read the book by Sebastian Junger, and look forward to the one by Coleman Hughes,
My husband and I listened to "The Perfect Storm" audiobook while on a road trip. We arrived at our motel nearing the end of the chapter and just sat in the parking lot listening for half an hour before checking in!
My wife had family living in the Gloucester/Rockport area at the time, and she was in a Fellowship in Boston-she said downtown Boston was like a ghost town just before the storm hit. Several of the asphalt roads by the coast there were completely torn up. It was a helluva storm.
Podcasts + Reading. I got a BA in English Lit and couldn't read for pleasure for years after that because everything had been about reading for work/study/assignments/tutorials. Now I love non-fiction and have read over 20 books this year (which is a huge uptick from previous years). Podcasts are in my ears on the way back and to school pick up. This year I discovered Monocle Radio and their news reportage is really good. YouTube - only if there is no other way to access a podcast. I actually prefer to read vs watch articles if that makes sense. Since discovering Substack this year (is it a newsletter? A blog?) I read all six subscriptions on here (both paid and free) and then global newspapers, some every day, some once a week or if something important is happening in a particular country. I miss good magazines :(
I used to get the Weekly Standard and loved it for the times but sadly they were all killed by TDS. Time and Newsweek are awful. Maybe that is something Bari can tackle next.
last great book I read was my grandmother's copy of Dr. Zhivago (I had big plans of reading War and Peace during one of the COVID Winters, but decided to "warm up" w/Pasternak)
I highly recommend it as not only great writing, but informative as to what can happen in a totalitarian run society! Best I've listened to recently is "The Killers of the Flower Moon". Such a great story- I've been afraid to watch the movie (to see how badly Scorsese has damaged it!)
Videos - Breaking Points with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti and the Megyn Kelly Show. Both are YouTube shows and podcasts at the same time.
Podcasts - Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson, The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish, Conversations with Coleman Hughes, Huberman Lab with Andrew Huberman, and of course, Honestly with Bari Weiss.
Books - The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray, YouMap and Maximize 365 by Kristin Sherry, Atomic Habits by James Clear, both 12 Rules titles by Jordan Peterson, next on my to-read list are The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.
I have GOT to start The Gulag, which has been on my “to do list” for years! Of the books on the FP list, I’m only tempted by the Junger book (reminds me a bit of Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere) and the Erik Larson book. I’ve read a few books by both Conover and Larson, and all I read were well worth the time.
Interesting question! I read/consume a lot. 30% books (non-fiction, typically autobiographical, intersection of medicine and history, or religious, etc), 30% podcasts (Honestly, Huberman Lab, The Journal, RadioLab) and 30% newspaper and substack (The Free Press, WSJ, Sensible Medicine). My favorite books this year have been by David Sedaris (thanks to Honestly introducing me!), The Girls and Their Monsters by Audrey Clare, and Exposure by Robert Bilott.
Just one work of fiction? (although there's probably enough fiction in some of the others). Most of the collected wisdom of humanity is contained in the Great Works. Not in trendy self-help digests. Sure there's probably merit in some of these works but a steady diet of non-fiction is dreary.
There aren’t any great works amongst fiction offerings these days. Most current fiction dwells on the angst experienced by the elites in privileged victim groups.
I agree that most modern fiction, from what I see in book reviews and through Amazon's "Read a sample," is formulaic, juvenile, and not beautifully written. But there is enough older fiction still available to keep anyone busy for years. Go to the library!
I’m not a good library patron since I read with a pen in my hand. I read mostly history but last year I read Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment and Bleak House. War and Peace is ready to go on Jan 1
No, not a good library patron! I think if you wanted to read anything in an e-book from the library, you could mark it up without interfering too much with the next reader's experience. (Previous readers' highlighting does show up as a faint dashed line, in my experience.) But you are an admirable person. My hat is off to you for finishing Moby Dick!
Novels that were released over the past few years, have been very affected by the woke disease, with selective publication of only the “preferred” viewpoints, authors chosen by identity politics, sensitivity readers, etc. Most recent award-winning novels exercise in wokeism. But if you go back 10 or 20 years, you’ll find that most acclaimed novels (especially those shortlisted for the Booker prize, Giller prize, etc.) will be worthwhile.
The general news is hard enough to take. Most of these titles will just induce more head-banging. I suggest Alexander McCall Smith a prolific Scottish writer and anyone of his slim and delightful volumes that is gentle on the soul and may even induce a relaxed internal feeling.
OMG his books are fantastic. The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, the series about the fussy Professor von Dittlesdorf and his magnum opus, “Portuguese Irregular Verbs.”. I read these ages ago but still remember and laugh and smile. Pure escapism.
Two words: Bunny McGarry (brainchild of Caimh McDonnell), though after the first half-dozen or so they got kinda dark for my taste. Heck of a ride until then.
I can’t recall the last non fiction book I read. I do read reviews however. There are a few in this list I would explore. Whoa Nellie! ?!? That one I might do
I did like it! It was ages ago, but I think what happened was I put it on pause bc it was so intense. Then I let it hibernate so long that I forgot all about it.
Meh. I'm 75 years old. I feel like the whole world is falling apart. I dip my toe in the news and quickly stand back and look at it from a distance, feeling at risk of being sucked into a big sea of awfulness. I don't want to hear any more talking about it. I want a return of common sense, civility, humanity, tolerance. I want to read literature, stories about plants and animals, and the occasional whodunnit.
If you are going to read Freedom by Sebastian Judge, do the audiobook. He has a great voice and the performance is a good one.
I also cannot recommend enough, Time to Think. It is a scandal on every page. She mixes the narrative with interviews with patients and their parents like mini case studies and it is so terrible! If a kid was working with CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and mentioned "gender" they were then referred to the Tavistock / GIDS and GIDS insisted they were just a referral service. This effectively meant that child's with all kinds of severe OCD or other conditions that made their lives incredibly difficult only got "treatment" from GIDS! This "treatment" was maybe a couple of therapy sessions about gender and then a fast track to puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, leaving the underlying mental health issues untreated! Watching two bureaucracies pass the buck between each other, whistle blowers ignored or be lied about by their supervisors, evidence ignored, a continued failure of leadership, etc, etc is really horrible. The entire "field" of "gender" is just a mill for endless books on the endless scandals. If you thought Irreversible Damage was a scandal or a hard read...you haven't even scratched the surface. And when eventually books are written about what happens here in America...as bad as the UK is for these things, we're the Wild West.
Sad that we need a book to show the insanity of the trans madness. But, I suppose when we have a madman in the White House mumbling about "gender affirming care" the masses need to be slapped back to reality.
Try as I might to get through to people why no way in HELL would I vote for Biden for this very "gender affirming care" and "white supremacy is our biggest problem" they blink as if I'm making it up. Draw the historical parallels and they blink as if I've just emerged from a Right Wing Sauna.
True. Our media has largely ignored or championed and lied about every facet of this issue. Most people aren't going through reddit and Twitter and tick tock on this issue.
I think I read and hear enough on all these topics without have to inflict more abuse on myself by reading entire books on them. Instead I have been fleshing out the gaps in my science-focused education by reading the classics I never had time to read before. Dostoyevsky. My God, he is brilliant. Kafka. Go beyond Metamorphosis. Read The Trial. Wow. The Master and Marguerita. Wild. (get the Cliff Notes, you’ll need them).Read some books on areas of history that were ignored in school. The Byzantine Empire, the Middle East before Mohammad, the life of Paul and the early church fathers, whatever interests you. Reading is time to escape from all the madness.
I am with you NC. I feel daily informed on most of these authors ideas and books.
Read Crime and Punishment this year. The Master and Margarita last (wild is an understatement!). Next this year is Heart of Darkness along with Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment) for fun.
I remember reading Heart of Darkness years ago; I couldn't help but see Marlon Brando between the lines.
I started the Master, and I just couldn't - so bizarre, should I go back at it or move on?
I plowed through. And yes, JP was reason I read it. A satire against the communist regime in Soviet Union. I finished w/o a clue. I sure wouldn’t fault you for not finishing!!
Crime and Punishment was great.
thanks! I'd like to read Crime and Punishment as well, reading Gulag Archepelago, but have to put it down occasionally as it's so heavy! thanks for your note!
i felt the same but continued to push on…it finally comes together in the end…i read it because of what Jordan Peterson said about it…g.
Thank you! Love JP recs - have learned so much! I’ll give it a go again :)
I read Dostoyevski's The Prisoner this year. After the Trial, you'll never wan to enter a courtroom. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Dante, from the frontispiece of The Trial. To understand the Arab mind; T.E. Lawrence; The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
The Muslim mind is very simple
Convert or die
The mind of America is simple
It cannot understand the Muslim mind
Because Americans are too scared to die for anything
You do not understand the complexity of the Arab mind. Not all Arabs are Muslims and vice versa.
What are you willing to die for?
You may want to talk to the thousands of US military who daily are putting their lives on the line.
Have you served in the military? Are you a police officer, a firefighter, an ambulance driver on the front lines?
Please do not attack me
Yes I did serve in the military
I will die for my children then my religion then America
I believe I used Muslims
Since their philosophy is convert or die
I do not care about complexities.
It is simple there are 30 Muslim countries at war against Israel since 1947. But America has done little to stop their war. Out of the top 50 countries that persecute Christians I believe 45 are Muslim countries.
80000 blacks have been killed and 42000 Christians have been killed since 2009 in Nigeria
Dio you give a shit!.
150000 Muslims have been killed by Muslims in Yemen
Do you give a shit?
Iran has called for the destruction of America
Why do you not take it seriously?
America has been invaded
The BDS are military cells
And hate the Jew is really disinformation and distraction for this invasion
Why do you think that I don't take the Iranian threat seriously?
I don't know what the BDS is.
Now there are groups of Black people who are using the Jews as a scapegoat for their faliures. Are these Black people part of the invasion?
If I worried about everyone in the world who's been killed, that's all I'd have time to think about, and as I enter the last stage of my life I prefer to spend my time thinking about other things.
My only point was your claim that "Americans are too scared to die for anything," and I disagree with that.
All the other stuff is your problem.
Dear Flatware Person. I think this reply is correct on so many levels.
Dear Bernie Davis. If you did indeed serve then perhaps you don't understand what you did, what you agreed to when you took the oath. Allow me to interpret from my perspective. When I took that oath I did so with this understanding. The words aren't mine but upon hearing these words the truth of the concept was a sobering epiphany. "When you swear that oath you are writing the Government of the United States a blank check redeemable with everything your are and up to and including your life".
I took the oath. The oath includes a provision to defend the constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. Now what if the enemy of the constitution is the misguided and cabal of communists who have wend their way into power? There is no time limitation on that oath. Oh Dear.
“BDS stands for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction. The BDS movement works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law.”
That’s from the BDS movement’s website. They try to get entities like businesses, corporations and universities to boycott anything Israeli, divest/not invest in Israeli businesses and for governments to issue sanctions against Israel for oppressing the Palestinians. Before Oct 7th college students liked to march around campus with BDS signs from time to time. Other people periodically march outside corporate headquarters with BDS signs to get them not to do business with Israel. It’s a thing.
FWIW, my aging feet hurt like crazy except when I wear NAOT sandals and shoes. NAOT products are made in Israel and I intend to buy them every chance I get, and I hope they never go out of business. Foot comfort is my political line that I will not cross.
Good grief, paraphrasing this comment and those following: "what am I willing to DIE for?’
Don’t you know dying is easy - just stand there, do nothing, die.
I’m more concerned about what you’re willing to kill for/about?
What’s that, did I just hear someone sucking in their breath? Did you do so when you read "willing to die for?"
If you truly believe in a cause, say freedom, liberty, justice, western thought - what would your death do to advance those?
16M men (and some women) mobilized TO KILL from USofA "to save the world." And we (WE) did.
Frankly, I think today’s westerner has been so brainwashed with the collective gobbledygook of modern passivity that all you can do IS die - let someone else do the hard stuff. Problem is, there ain’t enough of the "someone elses" to maintain your milk&honey pacifist mindset and life style.
Was it not General Patton who said that the idea was not to die for your country so much as to have the other SOB die for his? (Delicacy not his strong point...)
Thanks great line
I am not saying that the demoralization described in this podcast is intentional, but I do think that the program presented is useful to learn from. People who are taught to hate their own country will not defend it. If we find and found competitive educational institutions and good leaders generally step up now we are still 15-20 years from fixing the brain rot by replacement. https://www.youtube.com/live/ud6b3hOAsb0?si=jhJR8y1owWu_E9hR
Great point what am I willing to kill for
My children my religion -Jewish and America
To the comments people
Who would you kill for?
As distinguished from who would you die for?
Are these difficult reads?
NCMaureen, I'm with YOU! I get enough depressing stuff from various sources, so when I read I like to escape reality for a while. Dostoyevsky may be your "cup of tea", but for me he is too moralizing to be enjoyable. Never read Kafka, so I guess I must try him out. I much more like historical fiction, Science Fiction, and various titles whose reviews intrigued me. Nothing on the above list appeals to me.
(Time to throw out the anchor... late to the party; surgery this time.) I courteously read through the entire list and likewise concluded that there was nothing worth so large a fraction of my expected life (at 76) to read. My sense is that the selection is skewed in the same manner as is TFP in general: Flashes of enlightenment of persons unwilling to let go. (Eg, do I really need a bunch of hours to know that two-parent (specifically one man + one woman) families are -- literally -- God's way to go? Or that "gender services" is academic cant for "evil?")Furthermore: Those entire books of which you speak, when not blindingly obvious to Most of Us are, by virtue of present technology, somewhere between obsolescent and wholly worthless before they even make it past the typesetter. Concur with your reversion to classics -- they're classics for a reason. Be well...
I agree,Maureen. I get a lot from most of the authors mentioned by listening to Honestly, also Megyn Kelly's show in which she has interviewed several of them. Your reading list is impressive.
My favorite books in 2023 are quite different from the Free Press list. I added them to my long and rapidly expanding wish list for 2024.
My absolute favorite book (in terms of excitement, adventure, daring) for 2023 is The Incredible Life of Hubert Wilkins by Peter FitzSimons. I absolutely could not stop reading it.
The most depressing and emotionally draining was Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. It's a must read account of WW2, from the German perspective.
For a riveting account of 17t h century barbarism, murder, and cruelty, there is nothing quite like Batavia by Peter FitzSimons.
It's kind of lonely just reading old books. I think it'll be exciting to read these suggested books and feel more in the loop. Like watching a new TV show alongside the old classics.
A most dreary reading list, yes , full agreement with your above suggestions. So much that must be read in this all too short allotment of Fates' twine.
You go, girl! I’m with ya! The greatest solace. And a window into the greatest insights. These are called “classics” for nothing.
i also agree with you NC…i have focused on the Revolutionary War period, specifically about the creation of the Constitution…i felt it important to understand anew why our way if life is worth defending…it was illuminating to read that the political discord of the late 1790’s and early 1800’s sounded eerily like the US post 2016...
I have also been reading first person accounts of important periods in history…WWI, 1930’s Germany, and WWII are current interests…these books put the reader on the ground seeing things from the perspective of people in the middle of events…a perspective not given by the traditional recorders of history…g.
Yes, Franz Kafka is good, especially when you're in the mood for something weird and depressing. In addition to "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial", I enjoyed (if that's the right word) "In the Penal Colony", "Amerika", and "A Hunger Artist".
I think there is no more prescient novel for today than The Trial. Guilty until proven innocent. Guilty of what? Doesn’t really matter, the faceless State has already decided guilty.
Interesting list, NC. I read a book that might be a description of the precursor to our madness - American Prometheus, The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - a superb, dense and harrowing account about a time when elite minds were still held in high esteem, yet vulnerable to the first seeds of cancel culture and public vilification.
Yes, the consolations of history.
I put so much pressure on myself to read sometimes it feels like a chore. I really want to feel as though it's time escaping the madness as you say.
Universe good advice
“Because this past year might have been a bad year for the Middle East, for freedom of speech, for FTX, for House Republicans”
——————————————————
I do love that there is an Official State Narrative that everyone is running with about how House Republicans were in chaos this year because they actually, for once, tried to maneuver around the unremitting extortion racket where a bunch of parasites and oligarchs write a 3,000 page $7 trillion budget in the back room and then bring it out at the last minute and force everyone to sign it at gunpoint which totally defeats the purpose of having a democracy.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. She is what we think we elect when we vote for our representative to the House. Someone who cares about our interests and will fight for them. Someone who won’t be bought by lobbyists. Someone who speaks the truth. Instead they fold like cheap suits and then send us emails explaining their vote and asking for money. So she has to be vilified, called a laughing stock. I like her chutzpah.
Right…don’t admit that you like MTG to friends and family. For that matter, same goes for Tucker. They’ll likely laugh in your face unless they feel the same. I like both because they speak confidently about the lies and corruption going on by our ridiculous politicians who’d rather make spectacles of themselves than make things better for this mess called the USA! Liking them may make me look like an idiot, but I confidently don’t care anymore!
But those "Jewish space lasers...." I was curious as to what MTG actually said. And, just as I figured, she never said those words. Just like Trump never said that the Charlottesville tiki marchers were "good people." Our friends in the leftist media send lies twice around the world before the truth can lace its boots.
I've long suspected that was more fake news. If you could provide a link, would be greatly appreciated.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-wildfires-space-laser-rothschild-execute.html
This is interesting because, at least NY Mag had the decency to put up Greene's entire twitter quote. Most never do. Note she never uses the term "Jewish Space Lasers." As you can see, there's some clever conflation on the part of the authors linking the meme of the Rothschild bankers and anti-Semitism. Now you can raise an eyebrow over Greene's twitter post (I did) but note that she never used the term and her post was not really about a Jewish conspiracy. I looked because I saw her interview with Tucker Carlson, expecting a bit of a lunatic. But most of what she said made sense as an indictment of the DC uniparty.
I got banned from social events for just voting Trump, I never ventured onto MTG or House Speaker Johnson. I like you confidently don’t care wanna go for coffee Linda😄😄
👍🏻👍🏻I agree!
NC, as in, “Jewish space lasers?” THAT MTG?
hahaha, you’ll believe whatever MSNBC tells you?
Are you sure you didn’t mean to say, “where a bunch of 22 yr old interns write a 3000 page, $7 trillion budget in the back room….”?
No it’s oligarchs and parasites.
The interns are in a different room filming themselves having sex.
😂😂😂don’t write a book Kevin rather do stand up!
Eww, you call that 'sex'?
On an adjacent note, reportedly 49% of the "new jobs" (job growth being Exhibit "A" in the economy is great mis-, dis- and/or malinformation lottery) is in the government sector.
Well said, Kevin. I might add that 'republicans' just reauthorized Marxism against its own base(NDAA).
Write a book Kevin I would read it!
“But he’s not surprised by this. “To be an American radical,” he writes, “is to grow used to failure.” In order to make change happen, he argues, you have to struggle and battle and never give up.”
———————————————————-
Imagine if these effing douche bags never gave up battling and struggling to improve *themselves*, personally, instead of trying to reorder the entire planet and usher in pansexual intergalactic vegan communism. Nope. Can’t do that. Gotta be a busybody utopian dickwad. FFS.
Merry Christmas!!
Freddie deB is insufferable. But it is on trend to admire his writing I am not surprised his book makes this list.
"Pansexual intergalactic vegan communism." Another brilliant Kevinism!
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
(C.S. Lewis)
I venture you don’t have a CS Lewis quote containing ‘pansexual dickwads’?
You are correct. As broad a writer as he was, my internet search for “C.S. Lewis” and “pansexual dickwads” yielded no results. 😊
ChatGPT might disagree.
The "Merry Christmas" fits perfectly!
Kevin-are you Ed anger- reincarnate??
Asner?
no- not Ed Asner (as Lou Grant from MTM) Ed ANGER from the Weekly World News- who started almost every column w/ "I'm pig-biting mad..."
Ahh, Ed Anger. Coiner of the term "Broccoli Bruces".
John Waters wrote that the guy behind Ed Anger was totally doing a Wally George/Morton Downey Jr shtick, but man, he was "wtf the hell did I just read???" funny.
Ah-- I don't remember "Broccoli Bruces" but I'll check it out! Also Wally George/ Morton Downey Jr. schtick. If John Waters says it- it must be fact!!!
I wish P'Lod would come back and give advice to the Biden White House like he used to for Clinton!!!
I’ll schedule an unsedated colonoscopy before ever again reading the Free Press’s favorite Marxist Freddie deBoering. He provided the Free Press’s worst essay in 2023. If after the 20th century you still call yourself a Marxist you have more than mental health problems Freddie.
I actually read the book in my commitment to confronting leftists and their ideas. It was enjoyable for the parts that skewed progressives but wow that guy has no idea how the world works. He worked for like two years and now he wants to tear down capitalism. Another innumerate socialist.
Amen
deBoering Freddie?
Marxism is so yesterday.
Two things, one is that there is no time in which you should take what a Marxist has to say seriously. Ever. The other thing is it would be really great if you learned who Thomas Sowell is.
Seriously, your comment exposes a blend spot that Bari and team suffer from. But Sowell is just not on trend, not who the cool kids read.
One thousand “likes”! Fully bunny-approved. 🐰
In these very turbulent years, a friend introduced me to David McCullough’s books. I read history of the formation of our great nation that I never got in school. I read “John Adams” and it was like hearing our founding fathers first hand accounts. It was followed by “1776” and the military miracle that George Washington led to while “learning on the job”. We cannot lose what was given to us by great men who were all different but agreed to form this nation.
I agree about David McCullough, and also like Stephen Ambrose as a “popular,” i.e., non-academic historian. If you want a non-Marxist condensed history of the U.S., get Land of Hope, by Professor Wilfred McClay, formerly at Univ. of Oklahoma.
Finally, for a riveting popular history of WWII and its prelude, by all means get The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, by Herman Wouk. Those two books read quickly. And you will forever be able to speak knowledgeably about The Holocaust. Enthusiastically recommended!
Thank you. Read HW, but I will pick up Ambrose and McClay.
A friend of mine starting tracking the books he read on Facebook a year or two ago, and I liked the idea so I copied it. It makes it easy to look back on what you have read. I've read 21 books this year, the last being Brave New World, which I had never read. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it. It's less blatantly dystopian than you may suppose, and actually quite close to the reality of reasonably well off middle class Americans, who, as he says, really have no complaints that would give them cause to WANT to read deep literature.
Those who read ANY books are already an elite in this country, as far as I can tell.
And I will suggest to those of you who are on the road a lot that you get the CD player working in your vehicle, and visit your local library, which has hundreds of COMPLETELY FREE very good books ready to be checked out. I actually listened to, rather than read, Brave New World (and many others, including Don Quixote, and four books by Dickens).
The tide seems to be, if not turning, at least pausing a little in its urgent advance. That is something. There is sanity and rest in pause. It is a mark of genuine progress for each of us to realize we are confused, to look to the right and see confusion, look to the left and see confusion, and to start to move more carefully and thoughtfully. By and large people who cannot conceive of themselves committing an error do little else but make mistakes, which they then compound rather than decipher, over and over.
The speed of books is appropriate for human life. The speed of the internet is not.
You can also download audiobooks from the library onto your phone from Hoopla or Libby.
I didn't know that.
And then, if you're technological like my 5th son, you can use a Bluetooth adapter to connect your phone to the speakers in your 20-year-old car.
Or listen to them on your phone via Bluetooth earbuds on your walks.
I had no idea you could do that..
I personally cannot do this, but Son E, who is a wizard, had me buy him a thingie in the electronics department at Walmart for about $20, and he did it.
Your last paragraph...
That’s EXACTLY how I felt!
You may have seen earlier -- it's one of my recurring nightmares; that we've changed our environment so much so quickly that we no longer are suitable for it.
Consume more so we can produce more!
very thoughtful UF. I read Brave New World many years ago, and have been thinking of rereading "in these times."
There's a website called Goodreads where you can track your reading, as well as reading and writing book reviews.
Uh, who owns it?
No, idea. I find it useful, and it doesn't collect a ton of info on me, so I've never thought to ask.
Genuinely curious -- I'd only seen it in connection with Amazon. (With whom I've crossed swords recently -- but that's just me.)
It is possible to link your accounts together. I've done that, so that when I write a review on my Kindle app, the review also posts to Goodreads. But you don't have to link them.
I get the annoyance at Amazon, but they haven't managed to offend me to the point that I'm willing to surrender the convenience yet. Free shipping (with Prime) is a pretty big deal to me, especially with the way postal rates have gone up. And since we live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I often order things I can't buy locally.
Yeah, I actually bought a Nook -- it just wasn't ready for prime time. Goodreads'll get another look. Thanks.
It's heartening to say the least that criticism of the Sexual Revolution (Louise Perry) and the single mom craze (Melissa Kearny) are making it into the mainstream. I have been trying to discuss these issues with my useful idiot friends for ages and of course they brush it all off as if I turned "right wing." (As if that were a bigger problem than cutting off my son's penis -- if I had a son -- indeed, I followed the narrative off a cliff myself, hence my criticism of said narratives...)
But this line of fear-- which is always uttered as if it's great wisdom -- is just plain DUMB and I hope never to hear it again as if it's to be taken seriously:
"Melissa isn’t interested in shame and blame or in a return to the 1950s."
QUELLE HORROR! Returning to the 50s! One of the most affluent decades in American history! Sure, it was CONFORMIST...isn't that IRONIC? The very arbiters of conforming to bad ideas today are so worried about conforming to traditional, family values of the past to the point where "returning to the 50s" has become synonymous with Sharia law or something.
And on that note...someone in my Instagram feed is promoting "The world is becoming more Palestinian by the day..." SOUNDS WORSE THAN THE 50s...
Those who react to the thought of the 1950s with horror are (ironically) the same people who conform to every single woke “cause” of the moment, which they enthusiastically “enforce” with a McCarthy-esque rigor. But they are willfully blind to their own witch-hunts...it’s always “the other side” who are the oppressors.
As an avid reader of books, I have always had a mix of history, business, and literature. As I read the titles, nothing jumps out to me to buy and read. The only person I have purchased and read who is still living is Jordan Peterson's two most recent books. I always love to read Robert Greene. One thing I started doing this year was reading books; I read 20 years ago as I am a much different person, so I read it for the first time.
I would love to hear from some people about the % of your intellectual diet. Podcast, Youtube vs. Reading. Then, when you read, is it newsletters, websites, books, or newspapers? For me. I am a good mix of books ( I love American and Ancient history), newsletters, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. How about you?
I have read everything James Michener since I was a young teen. Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization, Leon Uris, James Clavell. On Spirituality, Cynthia Bourgeault, Ilia Delio, CS Lewis (Perelandra, my all-time favorite), Lao Tzu, Don Miguel Ruiz. Podcasts today: Lex Fridman, Coleman Hughes, Honestly, Joe Rogan, Efrat Fenigson, UnHerd, All In, Aubrey Marcus, John Anderson. I skim newspaper headlines but generally do without. Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, Peter Zeihan, The Free Press.
WHen I was younger, I bought the leather bound edition of Will and Ariel Duran'ts Story of Civilization. That is a huge undertaking to read but each New years, I always want to tackle it. Thanks for sharing.
There are more great works than one can read in a lifetime.
These tracts, although interesting, generally just catalogue our modern insanity. Which most readers of the FP don't need to be reminded of.
My greatest reading challenge was to tackle "The Rise and Fall OF The Third Reich". It took two years of intermittent reading to do it, but it was an education that I missed in high school and college. It helped explain to me many of the tactics used by politicians today, and I'm not speaking of Orange Man Bad!
I bought Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon and that was interesting as it was easy to read and grasp. I can still vividly remember the section on Catholic Church telling rich widows they didn't need their gold to get itno heaven while they built magestic building and lived lavishly. Human nature never changes.
I bought The Name of the Rose when it first came out because it was the thing to do. During the pandemic when our stupid far left wing mayor closed the library I decided to tackle it. What a dense wordy door stop. I think I got about twenty pages in.
Oh! I had forgotten that one. I did the same thing you did--got the book because it was all the rage (and there was a decent movie made from the core narrative) and couldn't get past a few pages. However, I remember being pleasantly surprised by "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," another trendy book of the 70's.
Thank you for asking, Mr. Loveland! That was thoughtful and fun to answer. Best wishes for a beautiful holiday and Happy New Year!
Further then I got
I read constantly (the looks of my house and yard reflect that). Seldom do podcasts or videos (5-minute videos on PragerU are an exception.) Daily routine of The Free Press, allsides.com, realclearpolitics.com, wattsupwiththat.com and Babylon Bee. For pleasure, I read the Dresden Chronicles by Dan Butcher (modern fantasy), the Walt Longmire novels of Craig Johnson and Joe Pickett novels of C.J. Box (both mysteries set in Wyoming) and the Chet and Bernie novels by Spencer Quinn (comic mysteries narrated by a dog).
I might read the book by Sebastian Junger, and look forward to the one by Coleman Hughes,
"The Perfect Storm" was a great book by Junger.
My husband and I listened to "The Perfect Storm" audiobook while on a road trip. We arrived at our motel nearing the end of the chapter and just sat in the parking lot listening for half an hour before checking in!
My wife had family living in the Gloucester/Rockport area at the time, and she was in a Fellowship in Boston-she said downtown Boston was like a ghost town just before the storm hit. Several of the asphalt roads by the coast there were completely torn up. It was a helluva storm.
Podcasts + Reading. I got a BA in English Lit and couldn't read for pleasure for years after that because everything had been about reading for work/study/assignments/tutorials. Now I love non-fiction and have read over 20 books this year (which is a huge uptick from previous years). Podcasts are in my ears on the way back and to school pick up. This year I discovered Monocle Radio and their news reportage is really good. YouTube - only if there is no other way to access a podcast. I actually prefer to read vs watch articles if that makes sense. Since discovering Substack this year (is it a newsletter? A blog?) I read all six subscriptions on here (both paid and free) and then global newspapers, some every day, some once a week or if something important is happening in a particular country. I miss good magazines :(
I used to get the Weekly Standard and loved it for the times but sadly they were all killed by TDS. Time and Newsweek are awful. Maybe that is something Bari can tackle next.
last great book I read was my grandmother's copy of Dr. Zhivago (I had big plans of reading War and Peace during one of the COVID Winters, but decided to "warm up" w/Pasternak)
I highly recommend it as not only great writing, but informative as to what can happen in a totalitarian run society! Best I've listened to recently is "The Killers of the Flower Moon". Such a great story- I've been afraid to watch the movie (to see how badly Scorsese has damaged it!)
Videos - Breaking Points with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti and the Megyn Kelly Show. Both are YouTube shows and podcasts at the same time.
Podcasts - Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson, The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish, Conversations with Coleman Hughes, Huberman Lab with Andrew Huberman, and of course, Honestly with Bari Weiss.
Books - The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray, YouMap and Maximize 365 by Kristin Sherry, Atomic Habits by James Clear, both 12 Rules titles by Jordan Peterson, next on my to-read list are The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.
Gulag is so worthwhile! It was my "Summer read" when I was about 20-21. Def. changed my outlook on the world!
I have GOT to start The Gulag, which has been on my “to do list” for years! Of the books on the FP list, I’m only tempted by the Junger book (reminds me a bit of Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere) and the Erik Larson book. I’ve read a few books by both Conover and Larson, and all I read were well worth the time.
Albert - read Tim Urban's book. Very good - even thought you won't agree with some of it.
Interesting question! I read/consume a lot. 30% books (non-fiction, typically autobiographical, intersection of medicine and history, or religious, etc), 30% podcasts (Honestly, Huberman Lab, The Journal, RadioLab) and 30% newspaper and substack (The Free Press, WSJ, Sensible Medicine). My favorite books this year have been by David Sedaris (thanks to Honestly introducing me!), The Girls and Their Monsters by Audrey Clare, and Exposure by Robert Bilott.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I will have to check a couple of them out.
Just one work of fiction? (although there's probably enough fiction in some of the others). Most of the collected wisdom of humanity is contained in the Great Works. Not in trendy self-help digests. Sure there's probably merit in some of these works but a steady diet of non-fiction is dreary.
There aren’t any great works amongst fiction offerings these days. Most current fiction dwells on the angst experienced by the elites in privileged victim groups.
I agree that most modern fiction, from what I see in book reviews and through Amazon's "Read a sample," is formulaic, juvenile, and not beautifully written. But there is enough older fiction still available to keep anyone busy for years. Go to the library!
I’m not a good library patron since I read with a pen in my hand. I read mostly history but last year I read Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment and Bleak House. War and Peace is ready to go on Jan 1
No, not a good library patron! I think if you wanted to read anything in an e-book from the library, you could mark it up without interfering too much with the next reader's experience. (Previous readers' highlighting does show up as a faint dashed line, in my experience.) But you are an admirable person. My hat is off to you for finishing Moby Dick!
Let's hope that's not the case. I suspect that the trash is elevated and the great ones lie in the "rejection" pile of the "literary" gatekeepers.
Novels that were released over the past few years, have been very affected by the woke disease, with selective publication of only the “preferred” viewpoints, authors chosen by identity politics, sensitivity readers, etc. Most recent award-winning novels exercise in wokeism. But if you go back 10 or 20 years, you’ll find that most acclaimed novels (especially those shortlisted for the Booker prize, Giller prize, etc.) will be worthwhile.
I really enjoyed Zadie Smith's "Swing Time" (2016)- Very popular, but also very good!
Thanks I will check it out
You succinctly sum it up much like my father’s favorite quote “what was oft said but ne’re so well expressed “. Pope maybe?
The general news is hard enough to take. Most of these titles will just induce more head-banging. I suggest Alexander McCall Smith a prolific Scottish writer and anyone of his slim and delightful volumes that is gentle on the soul and may even induce a relaxed internal feeling.
OMG his books are fantastic. The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, the series about the fussy Professor von Dittlesdorf and his magnum opus, “Portuguese Irregular Verbs.”. I read these ages ago but still remember and laugh and smile. Pure escapism.
Thank you this is good!
Two words: Bunny McGarry (brainchild of Caimh McDonnell), though after the first half-dozen or so they got kinda dark for my taste. Heck of a ride until then.
I can’t recall the last non fiction book I read. I do read reviews however. There are a few in this list I would explore. Whoa Nellie! ?!? That one I might do
Read "Red Notice." If you can put it down after one page I'll buy you a house.
Red notice is a movie. So it’s a book? Who wrote it.
Bill Browder. True Story. Best book I've ever read. You will not be disappointed!
Merry Christmas
I put down the audiobook after 2 hours and change. So I should finish it?
Probably not. I'm shocked ou didn't like it after two minutes, let alone 2 hours.
I did like it! It was ages ago, but I think what happened was I put it on pause bc it was so intense. Then I let it hibernate so long that I forgot all about it.
Meh. I'm 75 years old. I feel like the whole world is falling apart. I dip my toe in the news and quickly stand back and look at it from a distance, feeling at risk of being sucked into a big sea of awfulness. I don't want to hear any more talking about it. I want a return of common sense, civility, humanity, tolerance. I want to read literature, stories about plants and animals, and the occasional whodunnit.
I’m not from your age group, but I totally agree!
If you are going to read Freedom by Sebastian Judge, do the audiobook. He has a great voice and the performance is a good one.
I also cannot recommend enough, Time to Think. It is a scandal on every page. She mixes the narrative with interviews with patients and their parents like mini case studies and it is so terrible! If a kid was working with CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and mentioned "gender" they were then referred to the Tavistock / GIDS and GIDS insisted they were just a referral service. This effectively meant that child's with all kinds of severe OCD or other conditions that made their lives incredibly difficult only got "treatment" from GIDS! This "treatment" was maybe a couple of therapy sessions about gender and then a fast track to puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, leaving the underlying mental health issues untreated! Watching two bureaucracies pass the buck between each other, whistle blowers ignored or be lied about by their supervisors, evidence ignored, a continued failure of leadership, etc, etc is really horrible. The entire "field" of "gender" is just a mill for endless books on the endless scandals. If you thought Irreversible Damage was a scandal or a hard read...you haven't even scratched the surface. And when eventually books are written about what happens here in America...as bad as the UK is for these things, we're the Wild West.
Sad that we need a book to show the insanity of the trans madness. But, I suppose when we have a madman in the White House mumbling about "gender affirming care" the masses need to be slapped back to reality.
The masses aren’t going to read these books or any book. Now if you put little bits on TikTok.
Try as I might to get through to people why no way in HELL would I vote for Biden for this very "gender affirming care" and "white supremacy is our biggest problem" they blink as if I'm making it up. Draw the historical parallels and they blink as if I've just emerged from a Right Wing Sauna.
True. Our media has largely ignored or championed and lied about every facet of this issue. Most people aren't going through reddit and Twitter and tick tock on this issue.
Maybe we need a separate list for fiction. Particularly new fiction.
We have so few stories that bind us together anymore and it shows. Besides the only real truths live in fiction.
Bari Weiss How to Fight Antisemitism
+++++
For those who have not read this book it will make clear why the EU
The Scandinavian countries
Are more scared of hamas (Muslims) then Israel is.