As usual, I’m unsure about conclusions from my year in reading. There is no advance plan apart from challenging myself (cupcakes are fine here and there), and I wing it as the days pass.
However 2024 incorporated innovation, in the sense that for the first time in a long while I permitted myself to reread a few books from the generally distant past, all of which I’d characterize as influential.
In each instance, I was amazed at how much I’d retained.
Bruce Catton’s “Army of the Potomac” trilogy of Mr. Lincoln’s Army, Glory Road and A Stillness at Appomattox was a Christmas gift, circa 1970. I was a Civil War buff as a kid, and read my way through most of the public library’s stock. Catton was not an academic historian, and his focus on the “great men” is discredited nowadays.
But Catton could tell one hell of a story, a skill in part gleaned from listening to Civil War veterans spin yarns in the Michigan of his childhood, while always sticking to the facts (with a bibliography to match).
In like fashion, Frederic Morton’s A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 (published in 1979) and Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 (following in 1989) are examples of “popular” history, helping in large measure to cement my Habsburg fixation.
Under the Frog, a novel by Tibor Fischer, takes place in Hungary, and “follows the adventures of two young basketball players through the turbulent years between the end of World War II and the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956.”
I first read Fischer’s novel during the mid-1990s. It resembles M*A*S*H in tone, and is an impassioned case against totalitarianism, funny and tragic all at once.
I found Atheism: The Case against God (George H. Smith) at the library in late 1979 amid a turbulent, searching period of my life. It aptly complemented university coursework in philosophy, which became my major, and provided an abundance of confirmation for what had always been an absence of belief in deities of any sort. I can’t remember a moment in my life when the concept of “god” made sense, and Smith explained why.
40 years later, I’m flabbergasted by my level of retention. I internalized a great many of Smith’s points and have used them ever since when discussing the topic.
Of the remainder, here are five that I found particularly memorable, in no particular order.
- Malört: The Redemption of a Revered & Reviled Spirit, by Josh Noel
- The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania, by Robert Carver
- The Race Against the Stasi: The Incredible Story of Dieter Wiedemann, the Iron Curtain and the Greatest Cycling Race on Earth, by Herbie Sykes
- Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, by Mark Polizzotti
- Cooking with Fernet Branca, a novel by James Hamilton-Paterson
Here’s the entire 2024 collection, first in random photos, then the reverse chronology (December – January 2024) in text. An asterisk indicates rereads. It was in fact a great year in books and reading. I learned something from each of these books, and that’s what keeps me reading.
34 Atheism: The Case against God, by George H. Smith*
33 Mencken on Mencken, edited by S. T. Joshi
32 The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters, a novel by Chip Kidd
31 The Lager Queen of Minnesota, a novel by J. Ryan Stradal
30 Zagreb, Exit South, a novel by Edo Popović
29 Cooking with Fernet Branca, a novel by James Hamilton-Paterson (thanks to Marty Rosen)
28 Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914, by Frederic Morton*
27 Under A Croatian Sun, by Anthony Stancomb
26 What A Fool Believes, an autobiography by Michael McDonald with Paul Reiser
25 A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889, by Frederic Morton*
24 The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania, by Robert Carver
23 Under the Frog, a novel by Tibor Fischer*
22 Malört: The Redemption of a Revered & Reviled Spirit, by Josh Noel
21 Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs, by Marguerite Young
20 Goodbye, Columbus, fiction by Philip Roth
19 Italian Venice: A History, by R.J.B. Bosworth
18 The Silent Angel, a novel by Heinrich Böll
17 A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life, by George Konrad
16 Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk, by Barbara Holland
15 On the Edge of Reason, a novel by Miroslav Krleža
14 Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World, by Malcolm Harris (thanks to Ed Parish)
13 The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson (thanks to Jerry Meredith)
12 The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
11 Croatia: A History from the Middle Ages to the Present Day, by Marcus Tanner
10 The Other Paris, by Lucy Sante
09 A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton*
08 Too Late the Phalarope, a novel by Alan Paton
07 Glory Road, by Bruce Catton*
06 The Angel’s Game, a novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
05 Mr. Lincoln’s Army, by Bruce Catton*
04 Late Fascism, by Alberto Toscano (thanks to Frank Thackeray)
03 The Race Against the Stasi: The Incredible Story of Dieter Wiedemann, the Iron Curtain and the Greatest Cycling Race on Earth, by Herbie Sykes (thanks to John Neichter)
02 The Short End of the Sonnenallee, a novel by Thomas Brussig
01 Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, by Mark Polizzotti (thanks to Jon Faith)
