75 Book Challenge 2015

I’m afraid I won’t have much to say on this one, for a few reasons:

1. Wi-fi router problems mean I’m writing on a smartphone right now. Bad times.
2. I read this largely out of a sense of duty because of Molière’s reputation. The premise isn’t very appealing to me (my edition calls the play a “comedy of manners”).
3. Plays are meant to be performed, not read. My favourite Shakespeare play is Richard III, and my favourite play overall is Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Not coincidentally, these are two of the only ones I’ve seen performed live.
4. I read this partly as a way to practice my French. I found that, though I understood most of the words okay, following the sense of everything was difficult. This is a student edition, and I relied more heavily than I’d like on the annotations and summaries. No surprise that 17th century French is more difficult than, say, Chihayafuru, but I’d always thought of vocabulary as my biggest linguistic obstacle; I’ve now run into something new.

So, I’ve found myself in a two-book slump, though in neither case would I blame the author. My next book, besides continuing with Watamote, is a return to history with Diplomacy, by Henry Kissinger.

I hate to say it, but for me the main takeaway from Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August is that I don’t find military history as interesting as I used to. This surprised me, since I used to read a lot of it - back in middle school and high school, I read several books on the World Wars, as well as several other military histories from around the Napoleonic Wars on. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t read Tuchman’s book earlier.

Another audiobook, this time Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, published by Blackstone Audio and narrated by Simon Vance.

Now, when I wrote about Murakami Haruki’s Kafka on the Shore, I criticised the author for being too eager to show off how intelligent he is by name-dropping famous musicians and such at every opportunity. Wilde goes much farther, as a large part of the novel consists of long conversations that don’t seem to have much purpose beyond giving Wilde an opportunity to show the reader how clever he is, or filling a chapter describing the various musical or gemstone collections his protagonist acquires and making sure we all know how much research he did in the lore of these things. To be fair, Wilde is genuinely clever, and his dialogues are often amusing, but they make the novel longer than necessary and quickly begin to feel tedious.

Is “anything and everything” too broad of a topic for a web log? I suppose that’s what my blog name implies, but after writing mostly about animation and the occasional novel or graphic novel for a couple years, I’ve felt odd writing about works of history in the last month, and now I’m branching out even further.

Well, I’ll consider starting a second blog or something if people complain.

Anway, the twelfth book of the year is the rarest thing of all for me to cover: a new release. Michael Anissimov published his e-book A Critique of Democracy: A Guide for Neoreactionaries only about a week ago. Since I’ve already finished books on the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and an e-book collection of Sir Robert Filmer’s works, it seemed on-topic enough to take a detour from The Guns of August. The book is short (about seventy printed pages), and offers an overview of some of the basic arguments against democratic government. Anissimov maintains an even tone throughout and frequently refers to other authors and scholars, including several who wouldn’t agree with his own position, so the book reads more like a good textbook than a work of polemics. For example, though the enthusiasm for democratic government began in the Enlightenment, he doesn’t take a dogmatic stance on that movement as a whole. He writes, “The Enlightenment was an experiment. Some parts of that experiment did well, like the Scientific Method, others not so well, like democratic government.”

More history, this time The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815, by Charles W. Ingrao, which I read as a complement to A.J.P. Taylor’s book on the monarchy in the century after this.

Ingrao is, unsurprisingly, more positive in his judgements than Taylor. Of course, this is partly because he covers the empire at its height whereas Taylor covers its decline and fall, but Ingrao does a good job treating his subjects even-handedly, but Taylor was relentlessly critical to almost comical proportions, to the point of describing Rudolph II’s suicide as “fortunate.” That said, he does show some Liberal bias in a couple places, like his assessment that the French Revolution was worse than a “mixed blessing” because it prompted a conservative reaction against the Enlightenment across much of Europe. Frankly, when an ideology’s strongest proponents preside over an era known as the “Reign of Terror,” a good dose of skepticism is quite appropriate. For the most part, though, he consistently gives credit where it’s due and avoids judging his subjects entirely by modern, Liberal standards.

The one benefit of having a very long commute to work each day is that it allows one to get through a lot of audiobooks and podcasts. Not that I actually listen to a lot of audiobooks, admittedly, mainly because I like to mark up my books and share interesting passages on twitter as I go. They do benefit from professional narration, though, like a radio play, and poetry especially benefits from being read out loud. Of course, audiobooks are also a distraction while driving, though if I do get into an auto accident at least I’ll go out listening to something good.

I’ve heard of Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren’s How to Read a Book here and there before, but decided to give it a read after seeing Henry Dampier’s review of it, and thinking that it may be useful, especially since I’m trying to read more (and maybe even read better) this year.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the book as helpful as I thought I might, though that’s not really the fault of the authors. My main problem is simply that I’m already doing some of the things they suggest, e.g.  “inspectional” reading, skim- or pre-reading, or taking notes. The reminders don’t hurt, and I did pick up a few things, but I didn’t really need 336 pages of it, either.

I never thought I’d come up with a title more unwieldy than Rex Quondum Rexque Futurus: Kingship in Fate/Zero, but thanks to Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, I’ve outright crushed the previous record-holder. I’ve also changed the naming scheme of this series to make it less monotonous-looking, since this is obviously going to take up the vast majority of posts I write this year.

Anyway, my only previous experience with the Gundam franchise is the movie trilogy version of the original series and Char’s Counterattack. I watched those in particular because Daryl Surat, co-host of the Anime World Order podcast, recommended those four films as the quickest introduction to the franchise. I’m not a huge fan, but I liked them a fair bit; I’m also aware of Yasuhiko’s reputation and I’m a sucker for nice physical editions of books, and Vertical’s edition is gorgeous, so I went ahead and jumped for his Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, which adapts the original TV series.

It just occurred to me that I should’ve used the title “Bibliophile’s Journal” for this series, since this is almost exactly what I originally had in mind for the posts already using that title. I suppose I could go back and change it - there are only five entries so far.

Also: Once again I’m able to post two days in a row. My blagging prowess grows by the day.

Alright, we’re not even half a month into this challenge, and we’re bangin’ on all cylinders. My fourth completed book of the year is The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918, by A.J.P. Taylor.

Now, I’m the sort of person who can’t help but feel a fondness for the Habsburgs, but I don’t feel confident that I know enough about them, so this book was a good step in correcting that. Well, somewhat, at least - because it focuses on 1809 onwards, much of it only covers one Habsburg, Franz Joseph, who reigned from 1848-1916. Furthermore, the book is actually fairly depressing, as it covers the decline and fall of the Austrian empire. There are very few triumphs here, and there’s a lot of muddling along and compromising, trying to hold the empire together for as long as possible, yet knowing that things cannot go on forever. Indeed, if the empire hadn’t been necessary to maintain stability in this part of Europe and thus been handled with kid-gloves by its neighbours, it may well have collapsed earlier than it did. As Taylor put it, “Austria was preserved to suit the convenience of others, not by her own strength. A Great Power becomes a European necessity only when it is in decline; the truly great do not need to justify their existence.”