As usual, between gifts and books I purchased with gifts (including the Great Book Hunt), I started out the year with reading list already in hand.
Mollison (Permaculture 2) and Brown (Dirt To Soil) come recommended to me from Friend of this blog Leigh Tate:
Nighean Gheal bought me these for Christmas. She is interested in fashion and clothing, so I have received several books from her over the years on Japanese fashion. The book of Japanese plays fills in a gap in my knowlege:
Osprey Publishing does some of the best work I am aware of in terms of military history and armor/arms; their books are great references. The two budo books (Classical Budo, Classical Bujutsu) are by Donn Draper, considered an early pioneer in martial arts writing post World War II. The last book, As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams was unknown to me, but is a diary by a 11th Century woman in Heian Japan along the lines of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book or in the time and style of Murasaki's The Tale Of Genji. The fact that even though it is was both used and somewhat older it was still at full price suggest something rare and fun.
I was able to find the Loeb Classical Library's 3 volume set of Seneca's Moral Essays sold together for 2/3's of what the new books would have cost - all with their dust jackets, all covered in dust jacket covers, in perfect condition:
History: Victor Davis Hanson (War of the Ancient Greeks) is always a treat no matter what he writes. The Lives of the Stoics is in theory a high level review of stoicism, something I picked up an interest in last year. Paul Rahe's book Classical Sparta is the only one of the series of his four volume work "The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta" that I have not been able to find used in either stores or on-line; I finally had to by it new. And of course, what is a library with a history of the Ostrogoths?:
Traditions Of Christian Spirituality is a series starting in the 1990's which originally covered various traditions in the Catholic church (I have the books on the Cistercians and the Carmelites). They are a wonderful introduction to the various sub-units and include both history and a sampling of the literature of that sub-group. Apparently they had branched out into other Christian traditions; I bought one on Celtic Christianity (Journey On The Edges) and the Orthodox church (Standing In God's Holy Fire):
Thus, I entered the New Year with eighteen books to read which, along with the four I had purchased in December, started the year with twenty two - about a quarter of what I usually read in a year.
Bonus Round 1: Perhaps to the surprise of no-one, I have a book allowance for myself. This came in January. I have been eyeing it for month (some readers may recall I have often quoted parts of Olivier's book The Roots of Christian Mysticism):
Bonus Round 2: In November 2022, I also supported the Permies Kickstarter to support a video of permaculture based on the work of Masanobu Fukuoka (One Straw Revolution). As a thank you for that support, I received the following electronic bundles:
- 3D Plans for a Pebble Style Rocket Mass Heater
- EZ Cob Rocket Stove
- A chapter from Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist
- Thermophilic Compost for Garden or Home
- Wheaton's Video Series on Gaia's Garden
- Building a Better World
- Huglekultur: The Ultimate Raised Bed Gardening
- Together Resilient
- Learning to Spin with a Drop Spindle
- A Year In An Off Grid Kitchen
- Guide to Qualitative Assessment of Soil Microbiology with the Microscope
Bonus Round 3: As part of my Christmas present to myself, I also bought the Permies 2022 Bundle:
- 5 Acres & A Dream The
Sequel, chapter 6: "Food Self-Sufficiency: Feeding
Ourselves"
- Hotbed Plans + Self Heating
Winter Greenhouse
- Understanding Roots
-From Home to Small Town
Homestead
- 3 issues of Tiny House Magazine
(Issue 115, Issue 118, Issue 119)
-The Hugelkultur chapter of Edible
Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist from Michael Judd
- Clean With Cleaners You Can
Eat
- Joel Salatin's Successional
Success - Fields of Farmers
-Planting for Bees video
-High Performance Gardening
-Companion Planting Guide
- The High Art and Subtle
Science of Scrounging
- Cook with What You Have
- Neal Kinsey's Hands-On Agronomy
Video Workshop from Acres USA
- A Guide to Buy it Once Cookware
- A Guide to Buy it Once Cookware
- Together Resilient
- Harvesting Rainwater for your
Homestead in 9 Days or Less
- The Weekend Homesteader:
Winter
- 6 Ways to Keep Chickens
- 19 Skiddable Structures
- Permaculture Playing Cards
- Tour of Wheaton Labs, the Movie
- Paul Wheaton's Permaculture
Thorns Presentation
- Round Wood Timber Framing: the
Berm Shed Movie
- Care and Feeding of Rocket
Mass Heaters
- Hugelkultur microdoc
- Introduction to Welding in 47
Minutes movie
- Welding a Grate to go on Top
of a Portable j-tube
- 21 podcast review of Sepp
Holzer's Permaculture from Paul Wheaton
- Permaculture Thorns – A Book
About Trying to Build Permaculture Community
I would love to say that I am not planning to buy anything else this year, but I likely would be lying...
Ah, Solzhenitsyn. Years ago, I read one volume of The Gulag Archipelago. To say it was eye opening is an understatement.
ReplyDeleteYou have an intriguing assembly of reading, TB! I just want to reach in and take a peek at the books on textiles and archery
Do you know of an site to listen to recorded books online for free? That would be a real asset for some of us.
The Gulag Archipelago is on my list, but I have not made it there yet. I have read excerpts - the famous ones - but not the whole work.
DeleteI will be sure and do a review on the textile and budo books.
I do not know any online recorded books sites - to be honest, I have never thought of it. I did find this aggregator, which seems to have a number: https://bookriot.com/11-websites-find-free-audiobooks-online/
Thanks TB! I will check that out. Yesterday, I was visiting archive.org and discovered that they have an audio section as well as old books. Years ago, I tried downloading audio books from gutenberg, but could only find computer read books. Not easy to listen to and often with mistakes. I'm hoping things have improved since then.
DeleteLeigh, Archive.org also has any number of movies that may not be readily available as well. I am surprised - it is the sort of thing I use more than I had anticipated.
DeleteBook, a good four-letter word. Let's hear it for Osprey Books, have several shelves filled with their products.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good four letters word, Nylon12 (I had never heard that phrase before, but I am stealing it).
DeleteI love Osprey. They are such useful volumes.
This is the time of year when I really try to make a dent in the bookshelf that hangs feet from my bed and the pile of books underneath. My goal is to get enough space so all the books fit on the shelf. Ideally, I would like to empty the shelf, but I always seem to accumulate more books than it can hold.
ReplyDeleteEd - The struggle is real.
DeleteThe first thing that came to mind from your list was one of the main characters in "Lucifer's Hammer", putting away books, to one day rebuild the knowledge base of Man.
ReplyDelete"one day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch" and "the Gulag Archipelago" pretty well cured me of any inclination to socialism. There are series of drawings called 'Drawings from the Gulag", supposedly by a camp guard- horrifying, unknown to me as to actual provenance, but accurately reflecting Solzhenitsyn's storys.
Raven - Yes, that is it exactly. In my own very small way, I am trying to keep some element of knowledge available against whatever (even if it is just the discontinuation of hard copy knowledge and the ability to simply remove electronic media).
DeleteI have read "One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich". I honestly wish people would avail themselves more of his works and others that have actually lived through totalitarian regimes. How anyone can think that those are more desirable - even for the best of reasons initially - is beyond me.