Well, I did it.
Once again, I exceeded my minimum quota of 100 books a year. 155 by my count, and New Year's is still a few days away.
Here then, in no particular order, are the titles that alleviated my insomnia, upset my digestion, and otherwise occupied time I might've spent watching television, listening to Talk Radio, or wanking off. As I loathe the "star" system so beloved of other reviewers, I've assigned each weighty tome a letter grade.
My opinions are my own, and, I'll admit, highly subjective. Many of the titles whose content I most enjoyed were poorly written, and vice versa. Hopefully, this explains my adoption of the dreaded "Skool Daze" letter-grade system.
Psychologist's Book of Self-Tests: 25 Love, Sex, Intelligence, Career and Personality Tests Developed by Professionals to Reveal the Real You (Louis H. Janda) C-
True Spirituality (Francis A. Schaeffer) A+
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Arthur M. Schelesinger, Jr.) A
Tao: The Watercourse Way (Alan Watts) C
Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide (Jane Walmsley) C+
Steppenwolf (Herman Hesse) C+
'Tis a Gift to be Simple (Barbara Sorensen) C
It Takes a Church Within a Village: God's Grand Design for Building Values and Character in Our Children (H.B. London, Jr.) B
They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped that Sucker Flat (Lewis Grizzard) B
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Gore Vidal) B+/A-
America Unchained: A Freewheeling Roadtrip in Search of Non-Corporate USA (Dave Gorman) C+
February
Rogue Economics (Loretta Napoletani) B-
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth (Joe Conason) F
Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun (Wess Roberts) F
Behold a Pale Horse (Milton W. Cooper) C-
The Martial Artist's Book of Five Rings (Steve Kaufman) C-
Mencius (William Dobson) A-
Escape from Reason (Francis A. Schaeffer) A+
Getting Even II: More Dirty Tricks from the Master of Revenge (George Hayduke) C
Hong Kong (Jan Morris) A-
Thunder From the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (Nicholas D. Christof) C-
March
Brain Droppings (George Carlin) C-
Mayhem: More from the Master of Malice (George Hayduke) C+
America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving US Sovereignty (Jerome R. Corsi) A-
Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor (Thomas R. Brooks) A-
Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War (Gregory Daly) A-
The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce (Ambrose Bierce) A-
Mortified (David Nadelberg) C-
The Church of Our Fathers (Roland Herbert Bainton) B+
The American Indians: The Way of the Warrior (Time-Life Books) B+
Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Alvin Toffler) F
April
Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest (H.L. Wormington) B+
The American Indians: People of the Lakes (Time-Life Books) B+
The American Indians: Hunters of the Northern Forests (Time-Life Books) B+
We're With Nobody: Two Insiders Reveal the Dark Side of American Politics (Allan Huffman) A-
Finding Facts Fast (Todd Alden) A-
The American Indians: People of the Ice and Snow (Time-Life Books) B+
The American Indians: Realm of the Iroquois (Time-Life Books) B+
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (John Steinbeck) A-
A Single Pebble (John Hersey) A-
The American Indians: Tribes of the Southern Plains (Time-Life Books) B+
The American Indians: Tribes of the Southern Woodlands (Time-Life Books) C
The American Indians: Algonquians of the East Coast (Time-Life Books) B
Alcestis and Other Plays (Euripides) A-
Chuang Tzu: Genius of the Absurd (Clae Waltham) B
Zen in the Martial Arts (Joe Hyams) B
Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury) A-
Walpurgisnacht (Gustav Meyrink) A-
The Spinoza of Market Street (Isaac Bashevis Singer) A+
The Journey to the East (Herman Hesse) C+
May
Understanding Europeans (Stuart Miller) B-
The Magician of Lublin (Isaac Bashevis Singer) A-
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) A+
White Fang (Jack London) B+
Chance (Joseph Conrad) B+
Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabokov) A+
The American Indians: Indians of the Western Range (Time-Life Books) C-
The American Indians: Indians of California (Time-Life Books) C
Mom, Have You Seen My Leather Pants?: The Tale of a Teen Rock Wannabe Who Almost Was (Craig A. Williams) A-
The American Indians: People of the Desert (Time-Life Books) C
The American Indians: War for the Plains (Time-Life Books) B-
Essential Zen (Tanahashi Kazuaki) B-
The American Indians: The Mighty Chieftains (Time-Life Books) B-
The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (Marcus J. Borg) D
The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Huston Smith) C
There is a Happy Land (Keith Waterhouse) A-
June
Puckoon (Spike Milligan) A+
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (Spike Milligan) B+
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Kay Redfield Jamison) A-
Rommel? Gunner Who? (Spike Milligan) B-
This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation (Barbara Ehrenreich) C-
The Conscience of a Conservative (Barry Goldwater) C
Existentialism: The Philosophy of Despair and the Quest for Hope (Stephen C. Evans) A+
Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd) B-
I and Thou (Martin Buber) B-
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Jack Weatherford) B+/ A-
The American Indians: The Spirit World (Time-Life Books) C
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Danilo Kiš) A+
July
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller, Jr.) B+
God Our Contemporary (J.B. Philips) B
Great Religions of Modern Man: Protestantism (Leslie J. Dunstan) B-
Crash (J.G. Ballard) D-
Egil's Saga (Snorri Sturlusson, tr. Christine Fell) A+
The Rubaiyat (Omar Khayyam) B-
We Never Make Mistakes (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) A
The Revolution: A Manifesto (Ron Paul) A-
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Eric Hoffer) A-
Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Nathan Glazer) C+/B-
The Genteel Populists (Simon Lazarus) A-
August
One Hundred Favorite Folktales (Stith Thompson) B-
The Mammy (Brendan O'Carroll) A+
The Man Who Was Magic (Paul Gallico) B+
The Mouse that Roared (Leonard Wibberly) A-
Ramses II (Mark A. Simpkins) C
Bali and Lombok (Andy Barski) B-
Initiations and Initiates in Tibet (Alexandra David-Neel) B+
Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North American (Aby Warburg) B
Against the Grain (Joris-Karl Huysmans) A-
Elements of Buddhism (John Snelling) D+/C-
Miracles (C.S. Lewis) A-
The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (W.Y. Evans-Wentz) B-
The Stranger (Albert Camus) C-
On Moral Fiction (John Gardner) B-
Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth) A-
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) A-
I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition ("Twelve Southerners") B-
September
A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat (Arthur Rimbaud) B-
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) B-
The Last Day of a Condemned Man (Victor Hugo) C
Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) A-
Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel) A
The Little Prince (Antoine de St. Exupery) B+
Splendors of the Past: Lost Cities of the Ancient World (National Geographic Society) C
Hermes the Thief (Norman O. Brown) A-
The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan's Madness (Beroul) A+
Irish Proverbs (Karen Bailey) B-
War Before Civilization (Lawrence H. Keeley) A+
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Anon. tr. J.R.R. Tolkien) A-
War Songs and Poems of the Southern Confederacy 1861-65 (Various) B-
Warfare in Feudal Europe 730-1200 (John Beeler) A-
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ (Sue Townsend) A-
October
Laxdaela Saga (Anon.) A+
From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury) C+
The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) C+/B-
The Easter Rebellion: Dublin 1916 (Max Caulfield) A-
The House on the Borderland (William Hope Hodgson) B-
Political Correctness: The Cloning of the American Mind (David Thibodeaux) A-
The Faith of Epicurus (Benjamin Farrington) A-
11 Great Horror Stories (Betty M. Owen, Ed.) A-
Horror Times Ten (Alden H. Norton, Ed.) A
Irish Tales of Terror (Peter Haining, Ed.) A
The New Tolerance: How a Cultural Movement Threatens to Destroy You, Your Faith, and Your Children (Josh McDowell) B+
November
Medieval Political Thought (Walter Ullmann) A-
Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It (Jane M. Healy) A
Disney and the Bible: A Scriptural Critique of the Magic Kingdom (Perucci Ferraiuolo) B-
The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land: The Theology of C.S. Lewis Expressed in His Fantasies for Children (Kathryn Lindskoog) A-
The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (Richard H. Niebuhr) C+
The Chisellers (Brendan O' Carroll) A
Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment (Sissela Bok) C+
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) A+
Dark Thoughts, Dark Forces (J.K. Dark) A
(Yes, I'm biased as hell. Dark is a friend of mine…)
Biohazard 2012: An Anthology (Maragarita Bean, Jocelyne Thomas, David Bean, Eds.) A
(Yes, I'm biased as hell yet again. Four of my dearest friends: Liam Jackson, Cat Connor, Dawn Scovill, and Talon Overland contributed to this one, and I sank quite a bit of time and money into it.)
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (Bill McKibben) B-
The Pilgrim's Regress (C.S. Lewis) B+/A-
Legacy of Truth: Great Minds That Made Great Lives (J. Kennedy Schultz) C-
Apocalypse (D.H. Lawrence) C+
Myths of the Norsemen: Retold from the Old Norse Poems and Tales (Roger Lancelyn Green) A-
New Age, the Occult, and Lion Country (Nelson L. Price) A-
December
Larson's Book of Cults (Bob Larson) B+
The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in the Da Vinci Code (Carl E. Olson) A-
Once again, I exceeded my minimum quota of 100 books a year. 155 by my count, and New Year's is still a few days away.
Here then, in no particular order, are the titles that alleviated my insomnia, upset my digestion, and otherwise occupied time I might've spent watching television, listening to Talk Radio, or wanking off. As I loathe the "star" system so beloved of other reviewers, I've assigned each weighty tome a letter grade.
My opinions are my own, and, I'll admit, highly subjective. Many of the titles whose content I most enjoyed were poorly written, and vice versa. Hopefully, this explains my adoption of the dreaded "Skool Daze" letter-grade system.
January
Bold, Independent, Unconquer'd and Free: How the Scots Made America Safe for
Liberty, Democracy, and Capitalism (Alan Frey) C+
The Will of God (Leslie D.
Weatherhead) A-
Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux (Gary
C. Anderson) B+
A Foxfire Christmas (Elliot Wigginton) A+
Psychologist's Book of Self-Tests: 25 Love, Sex, Intelligence, Career and Personality Tests Developed by Professionals to Reveal the Real You (Louis H. Janda) C-
True Spirituality (Francis A. Schaeffer) A+
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Arthur M. Schelesinger, Jr.) A
Tao: The Watercourse Way (Alan Watts) C
Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide (Jane Walmsley) C+
Steppenwolf (Herman Hesse) C+
'Tis a Gift to be Simple (Barbara Sorensen) C
It Takes a Church Within a Village: God's Grand Design for Building Values and Character in Our Children (H.B. London, Jr.) B
They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped that Sucker Flat (Lewis Grizzard) B
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Gore Vidal) B+/A-
America Unchained: A Freewheeling Roadtrip in Search of Non-Corporate USA (Dave Gorman) C+
February
Rogue Economics (Loretta Napoletani) B-
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth (Joe Conason) F
Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun (Wess Roberts) F
Behold a Pale Horse (Milton W. Cooper) C-
The Martial Artist's Book of Five Rings (Steve Kaufman) C-
Mencius (William Dobson) A-
Escape from Reason (Francis A. Schaeffer) A+
Getting Even II: More Dirty Tricks from the Master of Revenge (George Hayduke) C
Hong Kong (Jan Morris) A-
Thunder From the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (Nicholas D. Christof) C-
March
Brain Droppings (George Carlin) C-
Mayhem: More from the Master of Malice (George Hayduke) C+
America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving US Sovereignty (Jerome R. Corsi) A-
Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor (Thomas R. Brooks) A-
Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War (Gregory Daly) A-
The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce (Ambrose Bierce) A-
Mortified (David Nadelberg) C-
The Church of Our Fathers (Roland Herbert Bainton) B+
The American Indians: The Way of the Warrior (Time-Life Books) B+
Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Alvin Toffler) F
April
Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest (H.L. Wormington) B+
The American Indians: People of the Lakes (Time-Life Books) B+
The American Indians: Hunters of the Northern Forests (Time-Life Books) B+
We're With Nobody: Two Insiders Reveal the Dark Side of American Politics (Allan Huffman) A-
Finding Facts Fast (Todd Alden) A-
The American Indians: People of the Ice and Snow (Time-Life Books) B+
The American Indians: Realm of the Iroquois (Time-Life Books) B+
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (John Steinbeck) A-
A Single Pebble (John Hersey) A-
The American Indians: Tribes of the Southern Plains (Time-Life Books) B+
The American Indians: Tribes of the Southern Woodlands (Time-Life Books) C
The American Indians: Algonquians of the East Coast (Time-Life Books) B
Alcestis and Other Plays (Euripides) A-
Chuang Tzu: Genius of the Absurd (Clae Waltham) B
Zen in the Martial Arts (Joe Hyams) B
Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury) A-
Walpurgisnacht (Gustav Meyrink) A-
The Spinoza of Market Street (Isaac Bashevis Singer) A+
The Journey to the East (Herman Hesse) C+
May
Understanding Europeans (Stuart Miller) B-
The Magician of Lublin (Isaac Bashevis Singer) A-
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) A+
White Fang (Jack London) B+
Chance (Joseph Conrad) B+
Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabokov) A+
The American Indians: Indians of the Western Range (Time-Life Books) C-
The American Indians: Indians of California (Time-Life Books) C
Mom, Have You Seen My Leather Pants?: The Tale of a Teen Rock Wannabe Who Almost Was (Craig A. Williams) A-
The American Indians: People of the Desert (Time-Life Books) C
The American Indians: War for the Plains (Time-Life Books) B-
Essential Zen (Tanahashi Kazuaki) B-
The American Indians: The Mighty Chieftains (Time-Life Books) B-
The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (Marcus J. Borg) D
The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Huston Smith) C
There is a Happy Land (Keith Waterhouse) A-
June
Puckoon (Spike Milligan) A+
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (Spike Milligan) B+
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Kay Redfield Jamison) A-
Rommel? Gunner Who? (Spike Milligan) B-
This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation (Barbara Ehrenreich) C-
The Conscience of a Conservative (Barry Goldwater) C
Existentialism: The Philosophy of Despair and the Quest for Hope (Stephen C. Evans) A+
Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd) B-
I and Thou (Martin Buber) B-
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Jack Weatherford) B+/ A-
The American Indians: The Spirit World (Time-Life Books) C
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Danilo Kiš) A+
July
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller, Jr.) B+
God Our Contemporary (J.B. Philips) B
Great Religions of Modern Man: Protestantism (Leslie J. Dunstan) B-
Crash (J.G. Ballard) D-
Egil's Saga (Snorri Sturlusson, tr. Christine Fell) A+
The Rubaiyat (Omar Khayyam) B-
We Never Make Mistakes (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) A
The Revolution: A Manifesto (Ron Paul) A-
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Eric Hoffer) A-
Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (Nathan Glazer) C+/B-
The Genteel Populists (Simon Lazarus) A-
August
One Hundred Favorite Folktales (Stith Thompson) B-
The Mammy (Brendan O'Carroll) A+
The Man Who Was Magic (Paul Gallico) B+
The Mouse that Roared (Leonard Wibberly) A-
Ramses II (Mark A. Simpkins) C
Bali and Lombok (Andy Barski) B-
Initiations and Initiates in Tibet (Alexandra David-Neel) B+
Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North American (Aby Warburg) B
Against the Grain (Joris-Karl Huysmans) A-
Elements of Buddhism (John Snelling) D+/C-
Miracles (C.S. Lewis) A-
The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (W.Y. Evans-Wentz) B-
The Stranger (Albert Camus) C-
On Moral Fiction (John Gardner) B-
Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth) A-
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) A-
I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition ("Twelve Southerners") B-
September
A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat (Arthur Rimbaud) B-
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) B-
The Last Day of a Condemned Man (Victor Hugo) C
Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata) A-
Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel) A
The Little Prince (Antoine de St. Exupery) B+
Splendors of the Past: Lost Cities of the Ancient World (National Geographic Society) C
Hermes the Thief (Norman O. Brown) A-
The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan's Madness (Beroul) A+
Irish Proverbs (Karen Bailey) B-
War Before Civilization (Lawrence H. Keeley) A+
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Anon. tr. J.R.R. Tolkien) A-
War Songs and Poems of the Southern Confederacy 1861-65 (Various) B-
Warfare in Feudal Europe 730-1200 (John Beeler) A-
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ (Sue Townsend) A-
October
Laxdaela Saga (Anon.) A+
From the Dust Returned (Ray Bradbury) C+
The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) C+/B-
The Easter Rebellion: Dublin 1916 (Max Caulfield) A-
The House on the Borderland (William Hope Hodgson) B-
Political Correctness: The Cloning of the American Mind (David Thibodeaux) A-
The Faith of Epicurus (Benjamin Farrington) A-
11 Great Horror Stories (Betty M. Owen, Ed.) A-
Horror Times Ten (Alden H. Norton, Ed.) A
Irish Tales of Terror (Peter Haining, Ed.) A
The New Tolerance: How a Cultural Movement Threatens to Destroy You, Your Faith, and Your Children (Josh McDowell) B+
November
Medieval Political Thought (Walter Ullmann) A-
Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It (Jane M. Healy) A
Disney and the Bible: A Scriptural Critique of the Magic Kingdom (Perucci Ferraiuolo) B-
The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land: The Theology of C.S. Lewis Expressed in His Fantasies for Children (Kathryn Lindskoog) A-
The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (Richard H. Niebuhr) C+
The Chisellers (Brendan O' Carroll) A
Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment (Sissela Bok) C+
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) A+
Dark Thoughts, Dark Forces (J.K. Dark) A
(Yes, I'm biased as hell. Dark is a friend of mine…)
Biohazard 2012: An Anthology (Maragarita Bean, Jocelyne Thomas, David Bean, Eds.) A
(Yes, I'm biased as hell yet again. Four of my dearest friends: Liam Jackson, Cat Connor, Dawn Scovill, and Talon Overland contributed to this one, and I sank quite a bit of time and money into it.)
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (Bill McKibben) B-
The Pilgrim's Regress (C.S. Lewis) B+/A-
Legacy of Truth: Great Minds That Made Great Lives (J. Kennedy Schultz) C-
Apocalypse (D.H. Lawrence) C+
Myths of the Norsemen: Retold from the Old Norse Poems and Tales (Roger Lancelyn Green) A-
New Age, the Occult, and Lion Country (Nelson L. Price) A-
December
Larson's Book of Cults (Bob Larson) B+
The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in the Da Vinci Code (Carl E. Olson) A-
Did Lewis get multiple A- because of the writing, or because you (and, admittedly, I also) can't square up with Episcopalian theology? :-)
Posted by: Aaron | December 30, 2012 at 03:59 AM
The latter reason, Aaron. I can't square with Episcopalian theology at all.
Posted by: Dave | June 20, 2014 at 08:10 AM