Le dernier jour d'un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man), by Victor Hugo

Je n'apprécie pas ce roman. Victor Hugo essaie d'éliciter du pitié pour le prisonnier et tout qu'il doit subir, mais il ne dit rien sur le crime de cet homme, donc le lecteur ne sait pas si la peine a été méritée ou pas. C'est une histoire déséquilibrée où toute sympathie reste avec le criminel et le victime est absent.

Recherche la paix et poursuis-la: Petit traité sur la paix du coeur, by Jacques Philippe

Ce livre nous donne de conseils sur la cultivation de la paix et la sérénité intérieure dans la vie par l'acceptation de nos propres limites et le développement de l'habitude de prier.  On s'inquiète  souvent à cause d'une tendance perfectionniste, et ce livre nous rappelle que Dieu n'attend pas à la perfection chez nous.

The Hall of Uselessness, by Simon Leys

Great collection of essays from an author whom I think is one of the best essayists ever!  The topics in this collection are wide ranging, from literature to China to history to the sea.  My favorites were the ones on Chinese art and history (a subject I know little about, so I learned a lot reading them), and the ones on Cervantes, Victor Hugo, and Magellan.  Included in this collection is the one where he (rightfully, in my opinion) excoriates Christopher Hitchens's negative comments about Mother Teresa.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot

Collection of fun poems about cats and their varied personalities.  I learned from this book that I have a Jellicle Cat, a Rum Tum Tugger, and an Old Gumbie Cat.  But I think my favorite poem is the first one about the Naming of Cats.

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

This is a very witty, readable little fable that illustrates the historical pattern that often plays out before, during, and after revolutions that promise utopian results. Somehow human, or in this case, animal, nature gets in the way, and what often happens is that the new government displays the same vices as the old.  The moral of the story is that we don't live in the Garden of Eden anymore and it's futile to hope that those kinds of perfect conditions can be realized here on earth.  The only sensible attitude to take towards those who promise paradise is distrust.

Reflections on History, by Jacob Burckhardt

Interesting and concise study of various patterns that often appear in history, particularly those involving the interactions among the three powers Burckhardt identifies at the start of the book: State, Religion, and Culture. Reading this book, which is not specific to any particular time or country, will make one more alert to spotting and remembering these patterns when they are encountered in studying the history of any time or people.

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

I read this entire series over and over again as a child and teenager.  I still have my original set of books and it's in sorry shape; they've been read so many times!  C.S. Lewis has a great talent for storytelling and building worlds and characters that seem real.  I always looked forward to losing myself in those stories.  It's hard to name a favorite among the books, but if I had to it probably would be a tie between The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven, by Mitch Albom

The premise of this book is that after you die, your life will be explained to you by 5 people whose lives were touched by yours in some way. They are not necessarily those who were closest to you; they could be people you barely knew, chance encounters, or even complete strangers. This story is about a Vietnam vet/carnival maintenance man and the 5 people who helped him figure out the purpose of his life.

I found it to be a page turner and could not put it down.

The World's Last Night, by C. S. Lewis

I enjoyed this little collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite essayists ever.  As always, they display his gift for clear, logical expositions in straightforward language and his way of bypassing currently popular ways of looking at things by showing how they can be considered differently.  Reading Lewis nearly always helps to broaden my mind and this collection is no exception.  My two favorite essays in this book are <i>Lilies That Fester</i> and <i>The Efficacy of Prayer</i>.

Europe: Today and Tomorrow, by Pope Benedict XVI

In this book, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) analyzes the source of the malaise that has affected the West through most of the 20th century: the currents of thought that brought it about, why it persists, and how it can be cured.  Very worthwhile read and gives a lot of food for thought. Given its short length, it took much longer than I thought to finish it because I often had to stop and think about what I had just read and how it related to popular ways of thinking and acting.

Le bonheur des petits poissons, by Simon Leys

Une très bonne collection par un essayiste cultivé et subtil. C'est le premier livre de Simon Leys que j'ai jamais lu et je vais définitivement lire plus. J'aurais préféré une collection un peu plus grande; le livre est beaucoup plus mince que j'attendais. J'aime bien L'empire du laid, Les mensonges qui disent la vérité, et Du goût.

Lincoln's Speeches, by Abraham Lincoln

Really enjoyed reading these speeches.  Lincoln was a fine writer as well as a great President, and a man of logic and good common sense.  A couple of speeches in this collection did get a bit dry in the middle--one of the State of the Unions, where he had to go into a lot of figures in the budget, but then there's no avoiding that when you have to go into detail.  The most inspiring ones for me were the one given at the Lyceum in Springfield, the House Divided speech, and of course, the Gettysburg Address.

The Complete Book of Crochet, by Elizabeth Mathieson

I have a vintage copy of this book that belonged to my mother that dates back to the early 1950's. The first chapter is an illustrated explanation of how to do various crochet stitches (it was how I learned to crochet) and the rest of the book contains a wide variety of patterns for crocheters of all levels, from simple small objects for beginners to tablecloths, bedspreads, and clothing for the more advanced people.  The designs in it are so much more elegant and classic-looking than a lot of the more recent patterns I've seen.

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

I put this book in my To Read pile because a year or two ago I saw the 1990's movie version starring Vanessa Redgrave and enjoyed it.  I thought the book would be lots more confusing than it really was because I was aware it was written in Woolf's "stream of consciousness" style.  Actually this style of writing is very effective at establishing an atmosphere and a character because you are let in on many more details in the scene noticed by the characters as well as their chance thoughts.  So I liked this a lot better than I thought.

The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico

Beautiful World War II story set in the British Isles about a lonely artist with a great love for animals, and a little girl who comes to his doorstep with an injured (and rare in those parts) Canadian snow goose.  The artist became one of the hundreds of British civilians who came to the aid of the stranded British army on the beaches of Dunkirk, helping to get the soldiers off the beach in little fishing boats, pleasure cruisers, yachts, and any kind of small craft they could find.

You'll need a box of Kleenex within arm's reach for this one.

The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis

This book is a thorough discussion of why pain exists in a world created by a benevolent God. I always enjoy reading C.S. Lewis's books because of his clear presentation of complex ideas and straightforward readable writing style. This book was no exception. It is an intellectual approach to the subject, so it would be a great choice for someone mulling dispassionately over the problem of reconciling the existence of pain with that of God, but perhaps not so much for someone who is looking for consolation because they are actually going through hard times.

Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, by Josef Pieper

Two thought-provoking essays on how using language to manipulate others rather than to communicate truth amounts to nothing less than a denial of the other person's humanity and status as your equal, and how perversion of language can be used by the unscrupulous to gain power over others.  Pieper discusses how well established this idea is--it's in Plato, Aristotle, and the early Church fathers, and how it has been pushed aside, not only in totalitarian states, but even in our modern, pragmatic state of mind that tends to value practical results over principles.

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

This is one of those series that I really enjoyed reading and rereading multiple times as a child--even late at night with a flashlight after I was supposed to be asleep!  Montgomery's characters and her descriptions of Prince Edward Island and other cities in turn of the century Canada are so real that I had no problem immersing myself in Anne's world. This series is one of the reasons I developed a love of reading.

Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis

I am not much of a science fiction person, so I did not think I would like this book.  But C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite writers, so I gave it a go.  And I'm glad I did.  As in <i>The Chronicles of Narnia</i>, Lewis creates a very convincing world and characters--one I could lose myself in.  Setting the story in another planet with different life forms and different ways of life offers plenty of opportunity to examine ideas and attitudes that are taken for granted today, but that are actually disordered and unnatural.

Already looking forward to <i>Perelandra</i>,  the next in the series.

The Clockmaker, by Georges Simenon

Dispassionately told little tale about a young boy from small town America who decides one day to commit a crime and how this affects his father, who owns a small clock repair business and who, as far as we know, is very much a creature of stability and habit. In a way he's a lot like the clocks he repairs. One is tempted to see this story as a lesson on the dangers of boredom, or of a kind of intellectual inertia that leads one to chase after thrills so that life might be worth living. By the end of the story the father reflects upon his own life and concludes that the apple didn't fall very far from the tree.

Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman, by Stefan Zweig

A man staying at a country hotel defends the actions of a married woman also staying in the hotel who decides to run away with a younger man, abandoning her husband and children.  His defense of the woman's folly prompts a respectable elderly widow to confess a similar incident in her own past.

Like other Stefan Zweig stories I have read, this one features a story told within a story, with interesting characters, psychological insights, and unusual situations.  Well worth a read.  The atmosphere and subject matter is very similar to Dostoyevsky's <i>The Gambler</i>.

Leisure, the Basis of Culture, by Josef Pieper

Josef Pieper examines the traditional concept of leisure and how it gave rise to the achievements of Western civilization. He contrasts it to our modern idea of leisure and the low value we place on it. Traditionally, leisure was something people aspired to have because it was the time they had in which to do the things most important to them; one worked in order to have leisure. Today, leisure is mostly thought of as time to recuperate so as to prepare one to work some more; one has leisure in order to work. This book raises important questions about ways of thinking about work and leisure that we take for granted.

Chronicles of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery

This is a collection of short stories located in and around Avonlea about different people, sometimes with Anne Shirley making an appearance as a minor character.  Lucy Maud Montgomery again displays her talent for storytelling and characterization.  I found these every bit as enjoyable as the Anne of Green Gables series and pulled it off the bookshelf to revisit about as often as the Anne books.  Of the stories my two favorites are Old Lady Lloyd and The Winning of Lucinda.

Between the Alps and a Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and the Rewriting of History, by Angelo Codevilla

Switzerland is a small, landlocked country surrounded by Germany, Austria, Italy, and France.  During World War II, with the German annexation of Austria, Mussolini's Italy deciding to side with Germany during the war, and the fall of France in 1940, Switzerland's desire to remain as a neutral and independent nation would have seemed impossible to anyone. This book is a very interesting account of the military, economic, and diplomatric strategies used by Switzerland to do just that.

The author also talks about some of the criticisms leveled at Switzerland in the 1990's about her conduct during the war, by those who wanted to profit by it.

Trojan Horse in the City of God, by Dietrich von Hildebrand

Dietrich von Hildebrand explains the philosophical errors behind the misinterpretation of the documents of Vatican II and how they led to changes in the liturgy/ other religious practices of Catholics--and not for the better. I'm a Catholic who was born long after the council, so I have no firsthand experience of the preconciliar church; however I'm also a classical music and vintage movie aficionado who learned something about what it was like by listening to sacred music by various composers and watching old film footage. I definitely learned a lot reading this book. Dr. von Hildebrand must have been a great professor. He writes clearly and concisely such that even I, with no philosophical training, could follow his arguments.

Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism, by F. Carolyn Graglia

Carolyn Graglia puts forth a thorough critique of the feminist movement.  Her arguments are logical, well organized, and reasonable, and they certainly are in accord with my own real-life observations and experiences.  She makes the point that women having the choice to go to work is one thing, but manipulating conditions so that women will have to go to work even if they would rather stay home to bring up their children is another thing entirely, and that in many ways the feminist movement has  been undermining women's interests.  Great read for those who are interested in women's issues.

Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, by Robert Bork

In depth exploration of the ideas of modern liberalism (in the American sense), the political movements of the 1960's and how the people who believe in these ideas managed to gain ascendancy over institutions that shape American culture such as the courts, the media, the movie and music industries, and the universities.

If you've ever wondered why the professors at your university (particularly in the humanities courses) didn't make much logical sense, why their discussions seemed to have little to do with the book you were supposed to be discussing in class, or why modern movies and music are of much lower quality, as far as content goes, than vintage stuff, Slouching Towards Gomorrah goes quite a long way towards an explanation.

On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, by Gertrude Himmelfarb

This is an excellent series of essays on various thinkers and philosophical ideas that have filtered out of academia and become influential in the modern world to the detriment of clear and logical thinking based on objective truth.

Her essay on John Stuart Mill, <i>Liberty: One Simple Principle</i> is especially good as an introduction to Mill's work, particularly <i>On Liberty</i> and the effects it has had on how people define "liberty" today.  Also particularly enjoyable is the essay on footnotes <i>Where Have All The Footnotes Gone?</i>, which suggests that their increasing absence in scholarly works, and scholars' increasing insistence on dispensing with them, is a symptom of the blurring of the line between history and fiction, footnotes being one of the ways a scholar's work can be checked by readers.

The Four Loves, by C. S. Lewis

This book includes excellent explanations about the four very different meanings encapsulated by the catch-all English word "Love," those four being Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity.  If you have ever thought that "love" is a word so vague as to be next to useless, this book will help clarify your thoughts about it with clear distinctions, examples, and by pointing out common misconceptions.  Definition of words can be one of the hardest things to do and Lewis delivers.

Definitely a book I will revisit again and again.

The Catholic Classics, by Dinesh D'Souza

This book makes a great introduction to 10 Catholic authors and the works for which they were best known:
1. St. Augustine (Confessions)
2. Boethius (Consolation of Philosophy)
3. St. Bede (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)
4. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica)
5. Dante Alighieri (Divine Comedy)
6. Blaise Pascal (Pensées)
7. Thomas à Kempis (Imitation of Christ)
8. John Henry Newman (Apologia pro vita sua)
9. G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
10. Thomas Merton (Seven Story Mountain)

The introductions to each author are concise and include biographical information about each author, the main features of their thought, the circumstances in which they wrote their books, and how their books were received. This book is a great choice for anyone with an interest in learning about these 10 authors or who might be starting to read their works.

Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne), by Georges Bernanos

This novel is written as selections from the diary of a country parish priest in an obscure French town. The town is humble and commonplace--rather drab, rainy, nothing glamorous or pretty about it, and the parishioners are very ordinary people: small businessmen, farmers, housewives, mischievous children, borderline juvenile delinquents. There is a count and his family, but even they are nothing special in how they live and their family problems. The young priest, who is seen as little more than a boy by some of the older parishioners, finds ways to help various members of his flock grow closer to God while living mundane lives that seem to have nothing of the sublime or holy about them. It is also about the young priest's interactions with fellow priests of nearby towns, an atheist doctor, an old friend from seminary who has abandoned his vocation, and his own bodily infirmities, which turn out to be much more serious than originally suspected. It is a very beautiful book, full of faith, hope and perseverance. 

It's the first Bernanos book I've ever read, and I look forward to read more by this author. 

Ce roman est une collection d'extraits d'un journal d'un curé d'un petit village obscur.  Son village est assez banale, les gens, ordinaires: paysans, petits commerçants, enfants.  Il y a un comte et sa famille, mais il n'y en a rien d'exceptionnel.  Le jeune prêtre, que les villageois voient comme peu plus qu'un garçon, essaie d'encourager quelques-uns de ses paroissiens de vivre d'une manière plus chrétienne dans un monde qui n'a rien de visiblement sacré.  Dans le journal nous apprenons aussi de ses interactions avec des autres curés, un médecin athée, un ancien ami de séminaire qui a abandonné sa vocation, et les infirmités de son propre corps, dont le diagnostic est bien plus sérieux qu'il attendait.  C'est un histoire plein de foi, d'espoir et de persévérance .

C'est le premier des livres de Bernanos que j'ai jamais lu, et je voudrais en lire davantage.

This Age of Fable: The Political and Economic World We Live In, by Gustav Stolper

Gustav Stolper has the ability to explain complicated concepts in clear concise language that is very accessible to the general reader who is not a specialist in politics and economics.  This book was published in the 1940's during World War II and some of the fables he debunks are still widely believed in today, particularly the ones about European colonialism, how capitalism works, the business cycle, and what really makes a "have" vs. a "have not" nation.  It's a great choice if you are a layman wishing to learn more about these topics (all listed in the book description above) or have a historical interest in what public opinion was like in the 1940's when the war was going on and its outcome was uncertain.

The book appears to be out of print, which is a shame.  The edition I was able to find is a vintage hardback one from 1942.

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, by Victor Davis Hanson

This is a collection of articles by columnist, historian, and classicist Victor Davis Hanson that shows why the neglected study of military history is important for everyone, not just those who want to serve in the military.  Studying past wars in past ages helps put current wars in perspective and helps one learn why and how wars are fought and justified.  Studying the Greek and Roman classics used to be one way that people learned about past wars but few schools below university level now teach about them.

Speaking of the classics, I have [author:Thucydides|957]'s big behemoth [book:The History of the Peloponnesian War|554178] on my to-read shelf and this book makes me feel guilty about not having had the courage to crack it just yet.  Maybe next year.

The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis

In these three brief essays, C.S. Lewis takes up the issue of moral relativism, how our view of what is considered rational and objectively true has narrowed significantly in modern times, and how that affects our outlook on morality, culture, art, etc.  He makes the point that children can be accustomed to this narrow view quite early in life before they can be aware of what is being done to them and the result is an adult with an impoverished moral imagination.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This is an account of what daily life is like for prisoners in a Siberian labor camp, written by one who knew them only all too well.  Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is a Russian soldier who was not actually guilty of anything other than having been captured by the Germans during the war and held as a POW for some time.  But that's enough to get him convicted as a spy by his own government and sentenced to 10 years.  When we meet him, he is on the 8th year of his sentence.  Through his eyes, we experience the hard conditions of life in the camp, including the cold, the Spartan meals, the penalties inflicted on the newer prisoners when they make mistakes, the way even the smallest bit of luxury is treasured and savored, whether it's a piece of bread saved from breakfast or a little bit of sharp metal that can be used as a knife.  It is a story of endurance and survival and shows how even great hardship and injustice can be borne with dignity.

At a Century's Ending, by George F. Kennan

This book is a collection of essays, articles, and speeches written by historian George F. Kennan in the 80's and 90's at the tail end of the Cold War. He was in the U.S. Foreign Service from the 1920's to the post WW2 era and even served briefly as American ambassador to the USSR. His views on the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe, the Cold War, American foreign policy, and the sometimes baleful effects of the American political process on foreign policy are very interesting, sometimes surprising. Great read for those interested in Cold War history. Also particularly educational for people who may have lived through the 80's or 90's as children, vaguely remember newscasts and commentary about these events but weren't old enough to understand much of it. I learned a lot reading this book. Since each chapter is a self-contained article or speech, the book lends itself well to reading in short spurts, and the chapters don't have to be read in order.

Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller

This is the story of Willy Loman, a salesman whose main fault seems to be a lack of prudence, the virtue of always remaining firmly anchored to reality.  Willy likes to think of himself as a very successful, popular salesman with a wealth of contacts in the Northeastern territory with a devoted wife and two grown sons on track to become as successful as himself.  In real life, his boss is trying to get him to retire, and his wife and sons are very careful not to say or let him know anything that might spoil his illusion since they found evidence pointing towards a suicide attempt on his part.  His elder son hasn't accomplished much of anything after being a star football player in high school and has lost several jobs because of theft, while his younger son is a womanizer who hasn't done much else either.

 I would probably enjoy this more if I saw a performance rather than just reading it.  It did get a bit dull at times, although the premise is interesting.

La Victoire Du Nord Aux États-Unis (The Victory of the North in the United States), by Charles de Montalembert

I saw and heard references to Montalembert in various books and lectures as one of the prominent liberal thinkers of the 19th century so I decided to look him up on Google books. When I saw this title I was immediately interested. As an American residing in the South I learned quite a bit about the reasons behind the Civil War in school from the perspective of Northerners & Southerners but almost nothing about how the war was perceived abroad. If you are curious about this subject, this slim little book is a great read.  The original French text available here, and an English translation is available here.

Montalembert wrote this after Lincoln's assassination and apparently there were many in Europe who mourned him as a great man. The author saw the Civil War and the resolution of the issue of slavery as a test to see if the American people deserved to be ranked among the great peoples of the world. The outcome of the war and resulting abolition of slavery led him to conclude that we passed with flying colors.

Montalembert includes a detailed refutation of the idea that any other issue besides slavery was the main cause of the war. Living in the South I have certainly heard this idea before--that the Confederate states seceded over of tariffs, protectionism for Northern industries, states' rights and other political issues. Montalembert makes a good case that even when disputes arose about those other issues, the dispute could in the end be traced back to slavery. Despite this, he does not demonize Southerners, notes that the valor and moral character they displayed in wartime were equal to those of Northerners, and acknowledges that many probably did go to war for reasons other than the maintenance of slavery. But they put their gifts in the service of a bad cause.

Another part I found interesting is when he contrasts how victorious American (and British) generals use their influence--that is, with humility, to help preserve the peace and stability of their countries rather than to seize as much power as they can for themselves. He compares Grant and Wellington favorably to Napoleon.

The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the first volume of the abridged version of Winston Churchill's series on the Second World War.  It mostly covers the events leading up to the war, from the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the formation of the League of Nations, the defense treaties of Locarno, and the unwise manner in which the treaties were enforced, with the former Allies putting undue emphasis on Germany's reparations payments while at the same time being lenient about seeing to it that Germany stayed disarmed.  Churchill also discusses how the economic conditions of the 1920's and 1930's destabilized German society and brought about conditions favoring Hitler's rise to the chancellorship and also the presidency after the death of Hindenburg. This book spans all the way up to the German takeover of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Churchill's own rise to the prime ministership.  I would say that the most important lesson of the book is how the biggest war in history was brought about by an inordinate desire for peace.

Besides his knowledge and being one of the major players in World War II, Churchill is an excellent writer and storyteller.  I listened to the CD twice.  The reader of this audiobook, Christian Rodska, does an excellent job and his voice is somewhat like Churchill's so that you feel rather like the author himself is reading the book to you.

Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford

This is a firsthand account of the founding of the Plymouth settlement in Massachusetts by the pilgrims who came over in the Mayflower. Reading (or rather, listening to the audiobook) it really brought home to me just how difficult it is to settle a new land, especially given the conditions back in the 1600's. Like any other ambitious group enterprise there was politics, intrigue, and all the ups and downs of getting along with one another, dealing with people's foibles, keeping the investors financing the enterprise interested, cultivating alliances with local Native American tribes, and so forth.

There are times when the book drags as Bradford will occasionally go into painstaking detail over things I wasn't too interested in, like exactly what was the cargo on a particular ship or what the terms of a particular agreement were, but this was written as a straightforward record of the settlement's founding, not a novel for readers' entertainment, so I won't quibble over that.

You'll have a new appreciation for what Thanksgiving is all about after reading this.

Sur le paupérisme (Memoir on Pauperism), by Alexis de Tocqueville

This book contains 2 essays Tocqueville presented to the Royal Academic Society in Cherbourg in 1835 & 1838.  Both are about poverty and the pros and cons of various measures undertaken to alleviate it.

In the first part, Tocqueville outlines the paradox of the wealthier, more prosperous nations (e.g. Great Britain) having much larger percentages of their populations claiming poverty and getting on the dole than poorer nations have (such as France and Spain).  He talks about the Poor Laws (basically an early government welfare program), which originated under Elizabeth I after Henry VIII destroyed the monasteries and seized their property, leaving the English poor without recourse, charitable works having once been one of the functions of the Church.  By Elizabeth I's time, the problem was so bad that the Poor Laws were passed, which made it the responsibility of each town council to tax their residents to support the poor in that town.  Tocqueville outlines the corrupting effects of these laws both on the poor and on those who are taxed to support them. He sat as an observer in a court of a British justice of the peace, where these poverty cases were heard, and his observations are as logical and as prescient as those in <i>Democracy in America</i>.

The second part is about the advantages and disadvantages of the French <i>caisse d'épargne</i>, a sort of special savings bank reserved for the poor.  It pays a higher interest rate than normal and it is meant to teach the poor to practice thrift and acquire habits of capital accumulation.  Tocqueville gives a very clear explanation how this institution works and his thoughts about it such that even a non-economist like me found it easy to follow.

I highly recommend this slim little book to anyone interested in the problem of poverty and the ways in which various solutions to the problem that look good on the surface can make it worse.

Update 8/22/16: In order to make this book more accessible to English speakers, as well as to practice my language skills, I decided to start translating this book into English and post it online in blog form.  You can access it <a href="http://tocquevillememoironpauperism.blogspot.com/2016/08/first-memoir-on-pauperism-first-part.html">here</a>.  It is not finished yet, but I plan to post a part of it every day until I get through!

Let Dons Delight, by Msgr. Ronald Knox

The premise of this book is very interesting, as it traces the conversations that take place in one Oxford common room over centuries, at intervals of 50 years each, starting with the year 1588, the just before war with Spain and the Armada, and ending in 1938, when World War II is approaching. The reader (along with the narrator) gets to hear what questions and ideas are being debated in the university during each time and compare them with those in other times. Prominent among the subjects are questions of church and state, the relationship between them, Catholic vs. Protestant ideas, university politics, the changing role of the university, and, of course, occasional jabs at its rival, Cambridge.

The (fictional) Oxford college where the book is set is humorously named after Simon Magus, a Biblical figure who converted to Christianity, not because he believed its teachings, but because he wanted to acquire the ability to perform miracles. He thought the Apostles would confer this power upon him if he offered them money. Simony is named for him and he was known as the first heretic.

You do have to be familiar with the events of English history from 1588-1938 to get the most out of this book. Chapters set during times I knew something about (like 1588 and the victory over the Spanish Armada, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the loss of the American colonies) were the ones I enjoyed the most.  The ones set during times I knew less about, like the early 1700's, I could not appreciate as much.

Lettres de Russie en 1839 (Letters from Russia), by Astolphe de Custine

This book is an account of the observations and thoughts of an astute 19th century French aristocrat during his trip to Russia. It is part travelogue, part the telling of anecdotes (historical and contemporary),and part an exposition of conclusions drawn by the author based on his observations (which are the most interesting part of the book).

Russia at the time was in the process of liberalization to bring itself closer culturally, politically, and economically to the rest of Europe, but the traces of its history under Mongol rule, feudalism and the absolute monarchy of the czars, were obvious and jarring to an observer not used to them.  These were the aspects of Russia Custine emphasized in his book.  This made the book understandably unwelcome particularly to more liberal-minded Russians who were trying to reform their country and improve its image abroad.  The book proved prophetic, however, when Russia fell back into her old habits after the Bolshevik takeover.

For a better grasp of the author's background, the audience for whom he wrote, and the book's place in history I recommend George F. Kennan's <i> The Marquis de Custine and His Russia in 1839</i> as a companion book.

St. Augustine's Confessions

This was a beautiful account of one man's spiritual journey away from God and back again.  St. Augustine had had a Christian upbringing as his mother St. Monica was a pious Christian woman, but he fell away from the faith when he went away to school and became overly occupied with worldly ambitions and pleasures.  Given how common this trajectory still is today, it was surprising how familiar his story seemed when it was written 1,700 years ago.

Many have commented on how unnecessarily nitpicky St. Augustine seems to be about sin, like when he talks about the incident with the pears when he was a child.  While the pears in themselves are a minor thing, you have to admit that there is something very disordered about a child stealing pears, not primarily because they look good and he wants to eat them, but because he enjoys the act of stealing. It's the difference between pursuing a good thing in the wrong way and enjoying evil for its own sake.  One would think that any parent aware of such a tendency in his child would consider it a serious fault and take steps to correct it instead of dismissing it as childish pranks.

The autobiographical part of the <i>Confessions</i> is in Books 1-9, and then the 10th book is an interesting read about the nature of memory--at the end of which is his most famous (and one of my favorite prayers): "Late have I loved you."  In Books 11-13 he gets into philosophical and theological matters that were way beyond me, so I just skimmed through that part.

I read the French edition translated by Robert d'Andilly, which was beautifully clear and easy to read.  I'm sure this book has been translated into most languages by now.

Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad

These are two very dark novellas in seafaring, colonial settings. Joseph Conrad excels in evoking an atmosphere and creating realistic characters and situations.

Heart of Darkness is a story told by a seaman named Marlowe to his shipmates about an eventful voyage he took down an African river many years ago to an isolated trading post belonging to the company he worked for. Mr. Kurtz, the man in charge of the post is their most productive agent by far but there is something mysterious about the man's methods the company doesn't like and they want to remove him. Marlowe comes to a slow realization of what those methods are as the voyage progresses and is shocked at how a seemingly normal, civilized man could descend to such depths. There is little direct interaction with Kurtz in the story; we get to know him mainly by what others think and say about him and by Marlowe's observations of the trading post and its surroundings.

Secret Sharer, on the other hand, is set in the Far East. The narrator is a young captain brought in at the last minute to replace the skipper of a ship whose crew has worked as a team for a long time. As he's the only newcomer on board and this is his first command he feels ill at ease with the crew. He soon gets a friend with whom to share his predicament in the shape of a fugitive officer from another ship who is in trouble for having killed a man during an emergency. He decides to help the fugitive by hiding him on board even from his own crew until there is a chance to escape. The captain's solidarity with the fugitive is even greater than that with his crew, and the satisfaction of secretly and successfully helping this man escape is what ultimately gives him the confidence to hold his own as captain.

Stages on the Road, by Sigrid Undset

This is a collection of six essays written by Sigrid Undset in the 1930's.  The theme that is common to all is that each details how various ideas or attitudes that had been established by the Catholic Church and that helped shape Western culture were lost when the faith in which they originated was lost or adulterated--starting with the Reformation.

In the first four essays, she presents a Catholic idea or custom, how it disappeared or is disappearing, then shows how that idea was manifested through the life of a prominent Catholic, many of whom are now canonized as saints.  I liked how she picked less well-known people because it gave me the opportunity to learn about them.  The four are:
- Spanish mystic Ramon Lull de Palma, who established a monastery in North Africa to enable friars to study Hebrew and Arabic, and whose goal was to spread the faith through persuasion and argument as Christ had directed
- English martyrs St. Robert Southwell and St. Margaret Clitherow, victims of the state taking control of the church
- Italian founder of the Ursuline order, St. Angela Merici, whose life shows how women with unconventional callings were respected in Catholic societies

<I>To St. James</I> is about the harmfulness of the sin of gossip--one that is only all too neglected today.
The last,  <I>Reply to a Parish Priest</I> deals with later developments in the Christian world that are controversial issues even today, such as changes in the definition of marriage, and euthanasia.

Warning to the West, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This book consists of four speeches and one BBC interview given by Solzhenitsyn to American and British audiences during the mid 1970's.  In them, he talks about his observations about dangerous tendencies in Western culture and intellectual climate that could lead to weakness and lack of preparedness to face the Communist threat.  Among them are the West's refusal to recognize the true nature of Communism despite straightforward exposition of it, lack of moral clarity, a materialist view of the world and of human nature, unwillingness to take a strong stance against the threat, and lack of interest in the plight of its victims.  He also points out some trends in the culture of that time (which are still trends today) that mirror conditions in imperial Russia before the Revolution.

I think this book is still very relevant today because even though the Cold War is over, we're not through with totalitarian movements yet, as can be seen in the destructive Islamist movements in the Middle East.  Solzhenitsyn points out that the temptation to create heaven on earth no matter what the cost is a recurring theme throughout history, and we must be in constant vigilance to guard against it.

Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy

I read this book years ago, then decided to re-read it after seeing the 1990's movie with Catherine Zeta Jones as Eustacia Vye.  I don't know why it didn't make a stronger impression on me the first time I read it.

There is something very modern about how Hardy uses the landscape of Egdon Heath.  He creates visions of large, primitive hills, with silhouettes of figures emerging from and disappearing into them as if they were growths produced from of the heath itself and were fated to merge back into it (ashes to ashes, dust to dust).  It made me think of a huge lava lamp (I know that's weird, but read the book and you'll see what I mean). The imagery reinforces the idea that human beings are futile, short-lived creatures.  The events that seem all important to us make no lasting impression on the world.  The vibrant character and beauty of Eustacia and her strong desire to escape from the heath make little impression in the long term and she never does escape.  Clym, who already did escape to Paris in the past, feels himself pulled back and decides to move back to the heath for good.  The heath seems to have an irresistible gravitational pull on all those who live there.

The reddleman Diggory Venn is the character most closely associated with the heath, and his redness and propensity to just appear and disappear at will into the landscape makes him an almost spectral figure, as if he were the spirit of the heath itself.  He is the wisest and best informed of the characters, and is the only one who doesn't have anything tragic happen to him.

Throughout the novel appears the theme of ancient, rural traditions coming up against new, urban ideas that in the end make little progress against the old ways.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I read the book after watching the excellent 1941 Spencer Tracy movie based on it and was surprised (although maybe I shouldn't have been) at the liberties Hollywood took with the text.  Neither the barmaid Ivy (Ingrid Bergman) nor Dr. Jekyll's fiancée Beatrice (Lana Turner) are in the book and they are major roles in the movie!

Instead, the book focuses on the observations of Dr. Jekyll's friends and servants about his mysterious and strangely repellent friend Mr. Hyde who is seen visiting his office frequently and at odd hours.  He does not seem like the type of person the morally upright and influential Dr. Jekyll would normally associate with, so there is a lot of speculation about him.  In the end, Dr. Jekyll confesses the truth in a letter to one of his friends.

I see the story as a lesson of what can happen when a person decides to give himself permission to occasionally indulge in something evil.  He thinks he is in control as he only gives in now and then, and he can keep it in a separate watertight compartment from the rest of his life.  But the indulgence becomes a habit and soon it controls him and takes over.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell

This was an Orwell book I'd never heard of until recently when I watched the 1990's movie based on it called <i>A Merry War</i> starring Richard E. Grant and Helena Bonham Carter.  The movie is very close to the book.  To start with I didn't even know what an aspidistra was.  It sounds kind of futuristic like Orwell's better known books, but it's just a houseplant, and a very common, very respectable, very hardy one at that, such that it becomes a symbol of middle class respectability in the story.

I found Gordon Comstock, the hero (or shall we say, anti-hero) quite tiresome, but enjoyed the book nonetheless.  Somehow he was a lot less tiresome when R.E. Grant was playing him onscreen.  Anyway, he's a copywriter for an ad agency with literary aspirations who manages to get a small collection of poetry published.  Buoyed up by this small success, he decides to quit his day job and become a full time writer.  Since he can't support himself writing, he has to take another day job as a clerk at a bookseller's that pays less than the old one.  Why not just keep the copywriting job since he has to have a job anyway?  Because he has declared a one-man war on money and wants to be as independent of it as possible.  So he wants a job, but it has to be a dead-end job.  Meanwhile he finds that having less money actually leads to his becoming more preoccupied with money than before, and he does less writing than before.  Money becomes an obsession. He hates it, the people who have it, and the things he can't do for lack of it more and more.  Finally, he is forced out of this vicious circle when he gets his (very patient) girlfriend Rosemary pregnant and has to solve some real life problems.

It's a very entertaining story about growing up and facing the real world.  The title alludes to how middle class respectability wins out in the end as Gordon and Rosemary start their married life together with their own aspidistra in the window.

Buchmendel and The Invisible Collection, by Stefan Zweig

These two are my favorite Stefan Zweig stories so far, though admittedly I have not yet read all that many.

Both stories share the theme of the fragility and complexity of civilization.  Building something worthwhile takes hard painstaking work, while destroying something is easy. In the <i>Invisible Collection</i>, a great art collection accumulated over decades is hollowed out within a few years in such a way that its owner is unaware that it has become worthless.  In <i>Buchmendel</i>, a highly specialized talent is destroyed, and those who might have appreciated it, dispersed or dead, so that no one but the narrator and an elderly cleaning woman are even aware that anything was destroyed.  Also, in both stories, the heavy hand of the state plays a big role in the destruction, with the hyperinflation that forced the man's formerly well off family to sell the collection, and the bureaucracy that trapped Mendel.

These are still very relevant ideas, not only for Stefan Zweig's time but for ours too.  I can think of many areas of modern life where the fake is passed off as the real thing, where one thing is pronounced the same or as good as another, when it's clearly not, where fine but important distinctions are not recognized, and where barbarism is allowed to progress, whether by deliberate design, through ignorance, or sometimes through outright hostility towards what others have accomplished.

The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene

I could not put down this novel about Scobie, a British police officer in a West African town.  He is married to a delicate woman who is so disappointed with the life they are living such that she is always ill.  His position is not  prestigious enough to give her the social status that she desires; he does not get the promotion that would have made him police commissioner, plus, there's not much of a social scene in that town anyway.  To send her on a trip to South Africa to improve her health, he has to compromise himself morally by borrowing money from a local lender under conditions that might cause his superiors to suspect him of accepting favors; then after his wife leaves he meets another frail young woman widowed during a rescue operation and enters into an affair with her.

Greene explores Scobie's increasing desperation as he tries to stay clean as a cop, tries not to betray any the obligations he has taken on to his wife and mistress, and reconciling all the resulting deceit to his relationship with God.  In the end it is God he decides to betray. His duplicity results in the violent death of his servant; he falls prey to despair and commits suicide, despite his conscience urging him to seek forgiveness from God and the people involved instead.  This is a story about how pride, even in the humble guise of just trying to appear reliable to other people, really is the greatest sin, because it causes us to deny that we really do need help and second (and third and fourth) chances from God and other people in order to finally get our act together.

Greene has a talent for scene setting, characterization, and psychological insight.  His characters are very believable (some of them exasperating!)  and you can lose yourself in the story.

Alone: The Second World War Series, Book 2, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the second volume in the audiobook version of the abridged World War II series by Winston Churchill.  It spans from Churchill's rise to Prime Minister in Britain and his formation of a government to the start of the German invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa).  On the way it includes an account of the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern battles.

Until I listened to this audiobook, I did not realize how important the Middle Eastern and North African battles were to the British war effort, as they were determined to keep the Germans and Italians from taking control of the Mediterranean, the Suez canal, and the oil fields in the Middle East.

Churchill is in top form as a writer and storyteller, as in <i>Milestones to Disaster</i>. The main drawback to listening to this as an audiobook is that you don't have maps to reference as you probably would have in the book. I had to look up many of the towns on the Internet with whose location I was not familiar. Christian Rodska does an excellent job as reader.

The Gambler, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I enjoyed this story of life in a 19th century German spa town whose main attraction, besides the medicinal properties of the water, is the casino.  There is a very good old Gregory Peck/Ava Gardner movie based on this story and that's what caused me to want to read the book.  The movie did take liberties with the plot, as the original story does not have much of a plot; it's more like a detailed study of the characters and their lifestyle.

The narrator is a young man named Alexei Ivanovich who is working as a tutor in the family of a dissolute Russian general in reduced circumstances who is waiting for his elderly sick mother in Moscow to die so that he can inherit her wealth and marry a much younger gold digger he met at the casino.  At first, Alexei is a detached observer of the goings-on in the casino, commenting on the various characters and even showing the general's mother how to play roulette when she unexpectedly recovers and turns up at the spa town, to everyone's disappointment.  But despite his awareness of the addictiveness of gambling (after observing how others fall prey to it, including the general's mother), Alexei's love for the general's stepdaughter Polina and his attempts to help her get the money she needs leads him to become a compulsive gambler himself.

Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein is one of those stories that everyone thinks they know because of so many allusions to it in popular culture, movies based on it, etc.  But the book turned out to be quite different.  It’s very much in the style of a Gothic novel with intertwined plots and subplots rather than the simple horror story I was expecting.

It turns out Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, but the surname of Victor the brilliant university student who created him, who does not at all fit the mad scientist stereotype.   The student, after years of hard work, succeeds in creating a rational being in his lab.  His problem stems from the fact that playing God in no way makes him God.  He does not have the deep love for his creature that God has and he does not have the foresight or the power to provide it with companions or an environment where it would fit in.   His contempt for his own creature and refusal to honor a promise to at least make a companion for it causes it to retaliate by killing its creator’s own loved ones.  By the end of the story, Victor Frankenstein is in futile pursuit of his creature, having resolved to destroy it so that it can do no more harm.

<i>Frankenstein</i> is basically a cautionary tale about the unpredictability of powerful new technologies:  they do not exist in a vacuum and they are not necessarily a force for good if their effects are not thought through.

Far From The Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy

I first read this story years ago in high school. We had just read <i>Tess</i> in English class and I liked it so much I went on a Thomas Hardy reading binge that summer. I reread <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> in preparation for seeing the new movie coming out this weekend. I'm glad I did as I am reminded again of why I like Hardy's novels so much. He is so skilful at depicting realistic characters and his descriptions of country landscapes and country life are such that you feel you are there. I also like how he peppers the narrative with shrewd observations about life and human nature.  I decided to reread it because I just saw the new film adaptation, with Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenarts.

<i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> is about a woman who gains financial independence when she inherits a farm from a rich uncle. She is courted by three very different men, who love her in three different ways, and she must choose among them. Bathsheba is supposed to be an intelligent, strong and independent woman, or at least Hardy keeps giving the reader that impression... but does she have some abysmal decision making skills!  Of her three suitors, she picks the worst one first, the next worst one second, and the best, most decent one is last.

There are some plot twists that seem a bit too contrived to me, like the part where Fanny Robin comes within a hair's breadth of marrying Sergeant Troy (which would have prevented a whole lot of trouble) but goes to the wrong church and the embarrassed sergeant is angry enough so he won't marry her anymore. Other than that this is a book that I just got engrossed in.

Come to think about it, maybe it's time for another Hardy reading binge!

Pierre, or The Ambiguities, by Herman Melville

The book started interestingly enough. Pierre Glendinning, the apple of his mother's eye and the beloved son of a well respected family, discovers that his father, whose character he thought was irreproachable, had an illegitimate daughter by a French refugee who mysteriously disappeared.  He meets this half-sister, Isabel (or she claims to be his half-sister), and, in order to ensure that she is taken care of gets part of his father's estate, he pretends to be married to her and alienates both his mother and fiancee.

After the point where he moves to the city and sets up housekeeping with his "wife" and a dishonored young woman named Delly from his village who has no place else to go, the storyline all went to hell pretty fast, going through all kinds of incoherent melodramatic twists and turns. I only finished the book because I figured I had already gone this far and there was a chance it might improve (this is <i>Melville</i>, the literary giant, after all), but it didn't.  I have since read somewhere that Melville may have written it to spite his publisher, who wanted him to produce more saleable conventional potboilers--so he deliberately made a mess of this one.

I gave it 2 stars because there are some beautiful passages in this book, but it was too weird for me. But then, Gothic novels in general aren't my thing anyway.  I read the <A HREF="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34970">Gutenberg ebook</A> of this title.

Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt

This is an excellent introductory book on basic economic concepts, and how to think like an economist.  Hazlitt states the all-important lesson that defines the aim of economics itself in Chapter 1:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

The failure (or deliberate refusal) to consider all the implications of a policy, both direct and indirect, is the reason why people, even whole nations, fall into the trap of adopting laws or regulations that sound good on the surface but prove to be toxic to their own prosperity and freedom.  This lesson cannot be repeated enough.

In chapters 2 through the end, Hazlitt shows how to apply this lesson in real world economic questions, among them, taxes, public works, tariffs, protecting failing industries, minimum wage laws, and inflation.

This book is a great choice for beginners who are just starting to study economics, those who need to brush up on basic concepts learned long ago, and those who have a weakness for supporting feel-good schemes that often help one special interest group in the short term at the expense of the general population in the long term.  I know I will be rereading this book lots of times!

Kristin Lavransdatter: Book III, The Cross, by Sigrid Undset

I think his final book of the <I>Kristin Lavransdatter</I> series is the best of all, because it's where the threads of the many interwoven lives, not just Kristin's, are resolved.  The books in this trilogy are not as self-contained as the books in other multivolume novel series I've read, such as for example <I>Anne of Green Gables</I> or <I>The Chronicles of Narnia</I>.  In those you can read just some of the books, or mix up the order, and it doesn't really affect your enjoyment of the books.  Not so for <I>Kristin Lavransdatter</I>, which is really best treated as one long novel instead of three separate ones.  I know I will be reading this series again, as there was so much to take in!  My favorite novels are always the ones that seem to create a whole world that feels real in my imagination, and Sigrid Undset definitely excels in this.

Gunnar's Daughter, by Sigrid Undset

I first heard of Sigrid Undset a couple of years ago after coming across an article about a new English translation of her <i>Kristin Lavransdatter</i> trilogy.  Since it's such a huge book, I thought I would read one of her shorter works first and decided on this one.

<i>Gunnar's Daughter</i> is a dramatic story of a woman who was raped by the man she wanted to marry, and how this betrayal of trust changed the whole course of both their lives. That the story is set when Norway and Iceland were in a time of transition between paganism and Christianity, so that the characters sometimes act in a Christian manner, sometimes not, makes it even more interesting.  We get a sense of what it was like to live in a time when infanticide, Viking raids, and blood feuds were normal and people were only beginning to question the morality behind those practices.  These days one comes across quite a few people who like to dwell on the imperfections of  societies with long Christian histories, blame them on Christianity, and think things would be so much better if Christianity were done away with altogether. Beware of what you ask for.....

I knew Undset was trying to emulate the style of the Icelandic sagas when she wrote <i>Gunnar's Daughter</i>, but I thought a saga was a long epic poem, like the medieval lays or the <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i>.  Turns out that the saga is a very pared down prose style that focuses on actions and events and does not dwell on descriptions or the thoughts of the characters. As a result, the story moved at a  fast pace and the style gave it a timeless quality. I could not put it down and finished it in one (late) night!  The spareness of the style actually  gives more scope to the reader's imagination since everything is not spelled out.

Looking forward to reading more by Sigrid Undset.

Ida Elisabeth, by Sigrid Undset

This is one of Sigrid Undset's contemporary novels, written and set in the 1930's.  It explores how changing ideas about marriage and family affect people's lives.

Ida Elisabeth is a young woman who makes the unwise choice to marry an amiable but irresponsible man (from a whole family of similarly amiable irresponsible people) who isn't anchored firmly enough in reality to reliably support his family.  She becomes the breadwinner, then decides to leave him and move away with her children when she discovers his infidelity.  She meets a much more eligible man in her new town but is torn between her love for him and doing what is in her children's best interest, as she senses his incompatibility with her children.  On top of that, her ex comes down with a bad case of TB and she feels duty bound to help him during his stay at the local sanatorium.

This book is what one might call a "kitchen sink drama" about ordinary people, their decisions, and their dilemmas.  I like this genre, so I did enjoy reading it, especially as Ida's problems are ones that are even more common today.  Loyalty and the unfashionable virtues of reliability and fulfilling one's obligations are major themes in the book.

Jenny, by Sigrid Undset

This is a very sad story of a young woman artist who lost first her father, then a loving stepfather, too early in life and who has learned to put too high a value on independence.  One of her best friends describes Jenny as generous, reliable, and always there for others, but with a strong tendency to withdraw when she herself needs help.  She expresses doubt about whether it is possible to love someone and also to be dependent on them. I enjoyed reading it because it explores many of the ideas about relationships and the strong emphasis on independence that are so common now, and that are apparently not as new as we think (<I>Jenny</I> was published in 1911, 105 years ago).

Two Essays by Wilhelm Roepke: 'The Problem of Economic Order' and 'Welfare, Freedom and Inflation'

These two essays are actually a series of lectures delivered by the author in the 1950's and they discuss problems that are still very relevant today.

In the first essay <i>The Problem of Economic Order</i>, Roepke shows how socialism, contrary to its partisans' claims, does not solve the problems that arise from the market economy--in many ways socialism aggravates them.  He addresses three different forms of socialism: 1) The redistributive type- the government taxes income and redistributes it among the lower earning population, while leaving the business world alone otherwise, as in many Western countries today, 2) The Marxian type- industries are nationalized so that government becomes the owner of the means of production, as in the USSR, 3) The St. Simonian type- government controls how various industries interact with each other to produce goods or services while leaving formal ownership to private owners, as in Nazi Germany.  One of the things I learned from this essay is that inflation tends to lead to increased collectivist tactics on the part of the government: As money loses its value in inflation, prices go up, and the government tries to cover up the inflationary effects through wage or price controls, at least for necessities. This leads to shortages of the things people want the most, and overproduction of nonessentials whose prices are not subject to the controls, what Roepke calls "the artistic ash-tray economy."

In the second essay <i>Welfare, Freedom, and Inflation</i>, Roepke concentrates on the first type of socialism, which in the West at least is the most popular kind.  He discusses how the establishment of a provider state both increases inflation and decreases freedom and emphasizes the point that increased credit and investment that is not backed up by increased savings leads to inflation.

I am not an economist, but I found these essays very clearly written and I learned a lot from them.

The Faithful Wife, by Sigrid Undset

This is one of Sigrid Undset's contemporary novels.  It deals with the difficulties of married life, particularly infidelity.  Nathalie and Sigurd have been happily married for a long time.  Nathalie, except for her inability to have a child, seems to have it all:  a husband she loves and gets along with, a job she enjoys and is good at.  Sigurd, on the other hand, has felt insecure since he had to give up his engineering practice due to some business problem with his partner, and has been an employee ever since then, not earning as much as he would like.  He starts an affair with Anne, a much younger woman who looks up to him, and Nathalie finds out about it when Anne gets pregnant.  It's a very realistic story, and Undset shows her talent for characterization by making all the characters quite complex so that you see both the good and the bad in each one.  These are three fundamentally decent people caught up in a dilemma.  Great read.

Kristin Lavransdatter: Book II, The Wife, by Sigrid Undset

I enjoyed this book just as much as <i>The Wreath</i>.  Its focus is Kristin's married life with Erlend on his ancestral estate of Husaby.  Kristin bears seven sons, and it is largely to her efforts and leadership that the badly managed farm and household are brought into shape, farming not being one of her husband's interests.  He is much more interested in politics, and this is where he gets involved in a group of partisans who prefer a different successor to the throne and falls out of favor with the king.  Kristin's younger sister Ramborg gets married...to Simon, who was Kristin's betrothed before she broke the engagement to marry Erlend.  She also loses her parents in this book, which is bad news to me because her father Lavrans is my favorite of all the characters in the story!  His gradual decline in health, and the account of Lavrans's taking leave of her on horseback after a visit to Husaby, which is when Kristin realizes that her father will not be around forever, is particularly moving and made me cry!

This book, just like <i>The Wreath</i>, is quite detailed on how the people of medieval Norway lived and did things, but Sigrid Undset presents their lifestyle as an integral part of the story, so it never feels as if one is just absorbing a bunch of boring facts. I'm actually surprised at how few footnotes are needed to clarify some custom or other to modern readers.

Already started on the third volume <i>The Cross</i>.

Kristin Lavransdatter: Book I, The Wreath, by Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset has a great talent for creating realistic characters and evoking the atmosphere and way of life in medieval Norway.  I very much enjoyed reading this first installment of the <i>Kristin Lavransdatter</i> trilogy, which covers Kristin's childhood up to age 17, when she gets married.  As with real people, Kristin is sometimes a sympathetic character and sometimes not.  She starts out as a gentle, obedient child to become a rebellious young woman who betrays her parents' trust by making an unwise decision to start an illicit affair with an older man of dubious reputation and lots of baggage (rather reminiscent at times of Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen's <i>Sense and Sensibility</i>).  Except that Kristin is not so lucky as Marianne because the affair does not stay platonic.  It leads to consequences that are all too forseeable (a pregnancy), and she succeeds in getting her parents to give their consent to the marriage--which includes breaking her betrothal to a more honorable man.

As with other Undset books I have read, the power to make decisions, the responsibility to shoulder the consequences, and the effects of one's decisions on other people are a major theme in <i>The Wreath</i>.

Have already started on the second book in the series, <i>The Wife</i>.

Et Pourquoi Pas? (And Why Not?), by François Michelin

This book is an interview that was carried out in the 1990’s between journalists Ivan Levai/Yves Messarovitch and Francois Michelin, then CEO of the Michelin tire company and descendant of the founders.  In it Michelin answers various very interesting questions, including:
How the company was founded in the 19th century making rubber parts for horse-drawn carriages and railroad cars
What it is like running such a large multinational corporation
The state of the French economy and government & how the latter’s actions affect the former Contrasting economic conditions in France with those in the U.S.A.
The rigors of competition
The famous Michelin star restaurant rankings
The interdependence of the roles of the people in the company, including himself, the management, the product development team, the workers, the stockholders, and always, foremost in everyone’s minds, the clients—the most important people in any business even though they are often not recognized as a part of it.

What comes through is Mr. Michelin’s faith and how it inspires profound respect for the people who work for and invest in the company and for the customers who patronize it.  Interesting read for those who are curious about how at least one CEO goes about his job and about the inner workings of a large corporation.  You will also enjoy this book if you are interested in how politics and economics interact with one another. For me the book was hard to put down; I finished it in 2-3 days.

Letter from an Unknown Woman, by Stefan Zweig

I first became interested in this story and its author when I watched Max Ophuls's excellent 1940's film adaptation of it starring Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan.

It's the story of a young woman who falls in love at age 13 with a well known 25 year old writer who lives in her building. She idolizes him to the extent that he becomes the sole focus of her life, but he barely even notices her and is known to bring home a series of different women to spend the night. Once she is grown up enough to attract him, they have a few encounters together resulting in a child, but he doesn't remember her after any significant absence. Not wanting to be a burden to him she never tells him about the child and basically sacrifices her entire life to her quiet obsession with him.

It's a very mysterious little story as it is told entirely from her point of view (he is reading a letter she wrote him that was delivered after her death) and there is something a bit surrealistic about the premise that the man just can't remember her even after their affair. Although to be fair, she never tells him her name and falls in with his desires just like anyone else in the long string of women he takes home, so why would he remember her?

The story can be read as a warning about the dangers of idolizing unworthy things, and also about what a lot a person can miss when they go through life being too self centered and not seeing others for the fellow human beings they are.

Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner

If you ever wondered about how a highly educated, highly civilized country like Germany could fall under the power of a barbarian regime such as that of the Nazis, this is a very interesting book to read.  It is the memoir of a man who lived through World War I as a child and then through the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich as a young lawyer and aspiring judge. He

He draws connections between his childhood experiences during World War I and how they instilled a peculiar outlook towards war in him and in others of his generation.  He writes of the surreal atmosphere and loosened morality that prevailed during the runaway inflation of the early 1920's and how the military training/political indoctrination camps young judicial candidates were required to attend before they could get their credentials helped make them more receptive to regimentation under the Nazis.

The book is well written and I couldn't put it down.  I finished it in one weekend and will probably be rereading it in the near future.

Astolphe de Custine and His Russia, by George F. Kennan

This is an excellent review of Astolphe de Custine's <i>Russia in 1839</i> and the times in which it was written. I read it right after <i>Russia in 1839</i> and it was very helpful as I knew nothing about Custine and it was the first book of his I had read.  George Kennan gives a very well-balanced amount of information in his book such that the reader gets a thorough overview of the context in which <i>Russia in 1839</i> was written.

Included is biographical information about the author, a French aristocrat who had lived through the French Revolution as a child, the social milieu in which he lived in Paris, as well as a short exposition of where Russia was in its history when Custine visited, and the reaction to his book in France and in Russia when it came out in the 1840's.

Kennan was a historian who served briefly as U.S. ambassador to the USSR during the Cold War and his thoughts about what Custine observed--reactionary traits that were on their way out under the 19th century Czars but that came back with a vengeance under the Soviets--are chilling.

Also interesting is Kennan's comparison of <i>Russia in 1839</i> with Alexis de Tocqueville's <i>Democracy in America</i>. The two authors were contemporaries, both keen observers, both liberal-minded French aristocrats, and between them they made prophetic speculations about the two countries that emerged as superpowers in the century that followed.

South of the Border, West of the Sun, by Haruki Murakami

What I like best about Murakami is the way he can evoke an atmosphere and describe the most mundane everyday situations/objects and bring out how beautiful or satisfying they really are, or introduce an uncanny twist to them.  Portraying alienation in a modern world is another thing he’s great at.  His writing style is strangely addictive and keeps you reading even when something just too weird to believe has just happened.  Sometimes his imagination strays into the overwrought, with gratuitous sex & violence  that contribute little to the story or characters (like he just threw them in there for shock value), but that was not the case for this book.

If you are in the mood for a book with logical plots and neatly resolved endings, then this is not what you’re looking for.  But if you have a willingness to just go along for the ride and an ability to suspend disbelief, then you will enjoy Murakami.  I’ve read 4 of his books now: first one was Kafka on the Shore, then Wind Up Bird Chronicle, then After Dark and South of the Border.

Under the Greenwood Tree, by Thomas Hardy

I read this book after <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> and in some ways it is a simpler, more lighthearted version of the later novel. Like <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>, the heroine, a young schoolmistress and organist named Fancy Day has three suitors, very different from one another, and she must choose among them.  The passions depicted and the events surrounding her choice are much more down to earth and not nearly so dramatic as those of Bathsheba Everdene, so the story has a more serene and relaxing atmosphere. Interwoven with the marriage is that of the pastor's decision to replace the unreliable crew of church musicians with Fancy, who can play the organ, and their unhappiness and speculations about the reasons behind this, the pastor being one of Fancy's suitors.

I have to say I enjoyed <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> more than this book, but it was a pleasant and quick read.

The Case for Democracy, by Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky, an erstwhile political prisoner in the Soviet Union, writes about how to accurately tell a free society from a "fear" society (one in which people do not enjoy basic liberties and are kept in check by their leaders through fear of punishment). He makes a good case for why it is in the interest of free societies to conduct their foreign policy in such a way as to link benefits granted to fear societies with requirements that the fear society reform its domestic practices.

Fear societies tend to be poorer and less innovative than free ones, so they often need aid, technology, and other things from free societies, but two of the ways they keep their population in check is 1) to distribute the benefits received so as to keep their population dependent on the dictator's good graces and 2) to present the free society to their people as an enemy in order to produce a state of internal solidarity and hostility against it (as if there were a war going on). Appeasement of dictators is therefore counterproductive as it leads to a vicious circle of increasing their power, aggravating tensions between the countries, and further appeasement by the free society.

It was particularly interesting to read this book shortly after George Kennan's At a Century's Ending: Reflections, 1982-1995 because Kennan has a more traditional view on foreign policy, i.e. stay out of other countries' domestic policy and just concern yourself with their foreign policy. Sharansky uses the relations between the US and USSR during the Cold War and the (seemingly endless) Israeli-Palestinian peace process as examples to illustrate why the traditional approach doesn't work when dealing with fear societies.

Triumph and Tragedy, by Sir Winston Churchill

Brilliant last installment of Winston Churchill's World War II series that clearly outlines the surrenders of Germany and Japan to the Allies, the fateful decisions made about strategy and troop allocations among the different operations, from the Normandy landing to the Mediterranean to the Pacific theater and how these decisions shaped postwar Europe, particularly the formation of the Iron Curtain, the partition of Germany, and Soviet efforts to grab even territories that had been liberated by the Americans and British.  Churchill remarks on the differences between how Roosevelt and Truman handled the war, how the invention of the atomic bomb and its use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed not only how wars could be fought, but the calculations behind the decisions connected with war.  Also included are accounts of the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek against the Chinese communists, India gaining independence from Britain, its partition into India and Pakistan, and Churchill's thoughts on Gandhi and Nehru (given how we tend to lionize Gandhi today I was surprised at some of these!).

I listened to the audiobook of the abridged version and am now motivated to read the full version because there are so many things just touched on briefly that I want to learn about in more detail!  In sum, an extremely interesting book that I know will take much re-listening to digest since it covers so much ground, and quickly too.

The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict

Concise little biography of St. Benedict that is perfect for those who want to learn what this saint was about. I would have liked for it to go into more detail about the Benedictine Rule, as this saint is known for setting up numerous monasteries and establishing the traditions for Christian monastic life.

Magna Carta

The Magna Carta just turned 800 years old this past June 15 as I was reminded on several websites I visit regularly, so I figured it was time to read it. It is one of those documents whose importance is impressed on people in school, but that few actually read, so I figured that the procrastination went on long enough and that this would be the year I would read it. I read the text off the Project Gutenberg website, which is a translation of the original into modern English, so it was an easy read.

Basically, it is a list of new laws limiting the King's power. The English barons had King John sign it after they won the battle at Runnymede. Most of the items have to do with the rights and duties of the king and the barons (especially the council of 25), inheritance laws, laws about the rights and duties of creditors and debtors, laws protecting the rights of merchants, and taxes. It dispels popular myths about medieval kings being all-powerful and shows the important part historically played by the aristocracy in bringing about the tradition of mixed (and limited) government in the West.

One item (no. 20) in the Magna Carta struck me as glaringly relevant to current events.  It says that a man should be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offense and that whether his offense was trivial or serious, the fine should not be large enough to deprive him of his livelihood.  Moreover, the fine could not be imposed until reputable people in the same neighborhood assessed it to be appropriate.  It brought to mind certain small bakers and florists who have been fined out of their livelihoods within the last few years...

When 800 years is not enough time for a lesson to be learned once and for all, it is safe to assume that the condition is chronic and requires perennial management.

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

I must have read this ten or more times as a child.  My mom had an old hardback copy from the 1940's that she had since her childhood and she gave it to me.  That book had a really hard life it was read so often--the cover and spine are falling off.  I have always enjoyed stories (no matter how long) that are told in such a way that the people in them become real to me and I can really get into that world.  Well Louisa May Alcott definitely has that talent!  I won't go into what my favorite parts of the book are because that would involve spoilers.

God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est, by Pope Benedict XVI

I read this a few weeks after C.S. Lewis's <i>The Four Loves</i> and it is an excellent companion to it, with a different emphasis.  While Lewis concentrates on defining four different kinds of love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity, Benedict XVI's focus is to differentiate two kinds of love as identified by the Greeks (eros and agape).  Each offers a reflection of God's love in the lives of individuals as well as in the life of the Church.  Very worthwhile read.

Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev

This book gives an illustration of the contrast in ideas and attitudes between older and younger generations, between experience and enthusiasm, between abstract thinking and the ability to recognize the limits of reality.  Also, it also explores how members of the younger generation learn, eventually, to accept reality as it is when it collides with their pet theories.  It is not a plot-heavy novel, but more of a slice of life type of novel, where the author presents various interactions and conversations among the characters during one summer when the sons return home from university.  The book was written in the 1860's, but the clash between the generations is timeless.

I first became interested in Turgenev's work after hearing this talk given by Isaiah Berlin, on Turgenev's short story <i>Fire At Sea</i>.

Villette, by Charlotte Brontë

I liked this novel even better than Jane Eyre!  I read it in high school for the first time and have revisited it more times than I have revisited Jane Eyre.  And I seem to understand more and more of it as I get older.

In many respects, the heroine Lucy Snowe is similar to Jane: poor, not so pretty, without family, and needing to make her own way alone in the world.  Both are quiet, unobtrusive young women who try to disappear into the background of the society they are in as is suited to their temperament and low social station, while regretting and sometimes envying the more outgoing, fortunate ladies who play a more active role in it.  Both are shrewd observers of the people around them.  Lucy, however, is a more guarded narrator than Jane.  She reveals things to the reader in her own time and you are reminded that she is in full control of the story—making you sometimes question how reliable, complete, or objective her point of view is.

The story is a lot more complex than Jane Eyre and the situations Lucy finds herself in are more realistic than the ones in Jane’s life.  No wicked aunts, insane wives, mysterious locked doors, or tormented, moody gentlemen here, so those who like the Gothic element in Jane Eyre and come to Villette looking for more of the same will be disappointed.  Maybe this is why Villette is relatively neglected compared to Jane Eyre; it does not make the same strong dramatic impact.  However, if you are looking for a story you can lose yourself in with sympathetic and lifelike characters and reflections on problems even more widespread today than in Charlotte Bronte’s time (such as loneliness) then Villette is a great choice.

New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism, by Theodore Dalrymple

This book is an interesting series of short articles on the pessimism that pervades the intellectual world in Europe, and the United States to some extent too.  There are several causes suggested in public discourse that are said to have caused this intellectual climate, and Dalrymple examines each one, among them the cynicism said to result from the destruction of two world wars (a cynicism in little evidence while the wars were actually going on), moral relativism resulting from lack of an objective moral standard, and a selective understanding of European history that strongly emphasizes the wrongdoing and leaves out the accomplishments.

The result is that many Western intellectuals don't recognize that they have inherited anything of value from their forbears and therefore are incapable of defending it.  Hence the allusion to the Vichy government in the title.  Oddly enough, this nihilistic point of view does not cause humility in those who hold it, but pride, because they are aware that Western civilization is humbug, and no one else is.  If you have met people like this, as I have, and you can't figure out where they're coming from, this book offers an explanation.

The Wreck of the Batavia, Prosper, by Simon Leys

<i>The Wreck of the Batavia</i> is a fascinating and concise account of a shipwreck on the Australian coast in the 1600's. The crew and passengers become a little society onto themselves. Once the small contingent of soldiers (whom you might say are the representatives of law and order on the ship) go on an expedition to find drinking water, and the top ranking officers leave to get help at the Dutch East India Company offices in Java, the rest of the passengers fall into the hands of a charismatic psychopath and his small band of mutineers. It is like an eerie glimpse, 300 years too early, on a tiny scale, of the totalitarian governments of the 20th century.  Perhaps there are always such destructive, nihilistic personalities to be found in every generation; it just takes the right combination of conditions to raise them to positions of leadership. I could not put this one down; read it in one night and went to work bleary-eyed the next morning.

<i>Prosper</i> is Leys's nostalgic account of a summer spent aboard the last sailing tuna fishing boat.  His descriptions of that life are vivid and entertaining.  Very welcome relief from the violent story preceding.

Alexander Hamilton, by Charles Conant

If you know little to nothing about Alexander Hamilton and his achievements as one of the American Founding Fathers and want to get a general introduction about him, you can't go wrong with this book.  It gives a good biographical overview, from his early life in the West Indies, education at Columbia University (then King's College of New York), growing involvement in the American independence movement and military service, to his service as Washington's secretary of the Treasury, disagreements with Thomas Jefferson's views and death in a duel with Aaron Burr.  Some chapters are dedicated to particular achievements, such as his contributions to the Federalist Papers, participation in the writing of the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, his role in establishing the Bank of the United States and Congress's power to fund the national debt incurred during the war.

It's not a very long book but it is packed with information and is clearly and concisely written.  

I listened to the <A HREF="https://librivox.org/alexander-hamilton-by-charles-a-conant/">LibriVox audiobook</A> version of this title rather than reading the edition pictured on this page.

Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton

I first read this book some years ago when I was in college because I was putting off studying for an organic chemistry final.  It was a very sad but beautiful story.  If I wasn't in the mood to cram for chemistry before reading it, I was even less inclined to do so afterwards!  Because I'm not usually in the mood for sad stories I never reread it, until recently when I watched the Liam Neeson/Patricia Arquette film adaptation from the 1990's.  It is very true to the book.

The story still affects me in the same way, except that now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, I am now able to see that the consequences suffered by the three main characters are at least partly caused by their own self centeredness and bad choices, instead of just being tragic victims of fate.

I'm also better able to appreciate Edith Wharton's use of symbols to foreshadow events or states of mind throughout the novel, rather than concentrating only on the plot.   This was the first of Wharton's books I had ever read and she has since become one of my favorite novelists.