resolutions and books
Jan. 3rd, 2012 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerSo, not quite sure if it's silly or not, but I've made some New Year's resolutions. I'm going to keep them private for now, but I'll evaluate them at the end of the year and write about them then. I wasn't sure how many to do, so I decided tentatively on ten, but I'm mentally leaving the option open for there to be a round dozen. :-)
Also, last of the booklist for 2011. Didn't quite make the fifty, but I came close. I will, really, try to go back and write mini-reviews for the ones I just listed during the year.
47/50: Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini. I enjoyed this quite a lot. It's pretty short, but it was well written and engaging. It was also nearly my first introduction to American political history between the Revolution and the Civil War. I knew a lot of stuff went on then, I just didn't think it was all that interesting. I guess it depends on who's writing about it. :-) I really hadn't grasped the central significance of the 3/5 Compromise in giving political power to the Southern states. I didn't grasp how very far back serious challenges to the very idea of federal union went (other than the Hartford Convention, which I never took all that seriously), nor the fact that 30 years before the Civil War, the president almost had to send the federal army into South Carolina to enforce federal law. Really, all the trouble the South has been over all these centuries--if it were up to me, we would just have let them go a long time ago. Much more trouble than they're worth, IMO. And Jackson (at least as depicted by Remini)--what a calculating, wily, political animal--an LBJ for the 19th century.
In progress
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
Doom Castle by Neil Munro
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Seasons on Harris: A Year in Scotland's Outer Hebrides by David Yeadon
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz
About a third of my books in 2011 were re-reads (though some I had not read for decades). I will try to thin down that percentage somewhat this year; I have too many books to be re-reading one to every two new ones. I'll never get through all the books I *want* to read at that rate!
Also, last of the booklist for 2011. Didn't quite make the fifty, but I came close. I will, really, try to go back and write mini-reviews for the ones I just listed during the year.
47/50: Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini. I enjoyed this quite a lot. It's pretty short, but it was well written and engaging. It was also nearly my first introduction to American political history between the Revolution and the Civil War. I knew a lot of stuff went on then, I just didn't think it was all that interesting. I guess it depends on who's writing about it. :-) I really hadn't grasped the central significance of the 3/5 Compromise in giving political power to the Southern states. I didn't grasp how very far back serious challenges to the very idea of federal union went (other than the Hartford Convention, which I never took all that seriously), nor the fact that 30 years before the Civil War, the president almost had to send the federal army into South Carolina to enforce federal law. Really, all the trouble the South has been over all these centuries--if it were up to me, we would just have let them go a long time ago. Much more trouble than they're worth, IMO. And Jackson (at least as depicted by Remini)--what a calculating, wily, political animal--an LBJ for the 19th century.
In progress
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
Doom Castle by Neil Munro
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Seasons on Harris: A Year in Scotland's Outer Hebrides by David Yeadon
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz
About a third of my books in 2011 were re-reads (though some I had not read for decades). I will try to thin down that percentage somewhat this year; I have too many books to be re-reading one to every two new ones. I'll never get through all the books I *want* to read at that rate!
