Books from 2015

After reading this post at Fr. Tim's website:
Books I read or re-read in 2015

it seems good to me to post a similar list. Like Fr. Tim's list, this is in the order in which I read them.

- The Apocrypha (I had never read all of it at one go, and some of the murkier parts that are not in the Daily Office Lectionary never at all. Until this year.)

- Bernstein, Wm. J.: Rational Expectations (there are four finance/investing books on my list, because I must deal with such things in terms of retirement savings, but more so because I find the subject fascinating. This was the most immediately practical of the four, though Graham [see below] is a greater and more important book in the long term, as Bernstein himself would probably admit.)

- Anderson, Poul: The Psychotechnic League Trilogy
----- The Psychotechnic League
----- Cold Victory
----- Starship
(These three paperbacks have languished on my shelf for decades. It is a "future history" that Anderson wrote in the late 1950's, beginning with a back-story where President Eisenhower died on the operating table following his 1955 heart attack, and the new President Nixon "pushed the button," launching a pre-emptive strike against the USSR and all but destroying the world. Not Anderson's best, but enjoyable.)

- Shiller, Robert J.: Irrational Exuberance (another financial book, from a Nobel laureate, describing the investment "bubbles" of our time. He pretty much thinks that we are in another one. I use his cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio, or CAPE, as a primary market indicator.)

- Dawn, Marva J.: Unfettered Hope: a Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society (She is an author to whom I always attend, ever since her book "Reaching Out without Dumbing Down." This is another fine book, mostly about how a Christian life of simplicity, peacemaking, and love is a Witness, a Hope in our affluent society.)

- Mason, Bernard S.: Woodcraft (this was from my mother's house, and came to me when we cleared out its contents. As I wrote elsewhere, my mother started what may have been the first Girl Scout troop in her state as a young schoolteacher around 1935. This book, much underlined and annotated, is from that period of her life. Although I grew up with it on the bookshelf at home, I never read it. I wish I had.)

- Brown, Rita May: Animal Magnetism (a gift to my wife, who reads Brown's "Sneaky Pie Brown" mysteries. This book is nonfiction, an autobiography of Brown's lifelong relations with animals of all sorts, especially horses and dogs, and the lessons she has learned from them.)

- Collins, Suzanne: The Mockingjay (I had read the previous volumes in the "Hunger Games" trilogy, and wrote of them in the Music Box; I did not get around to this one until now. I find it less compelling -- it is as if Collins were writing a movie novelization. Almost every scene seems as if it were written with an eye as to how it would appear on screen, a failing which at times afflicts the latter volumes of the Harry Potter series in my opinion. But the first book of Collins' trilogy, "Hunger Games," is outstanding.)

- Bailey, Albert Edward: The Gospel in Hymns (this was one of my Big Projects for the year. It was formerly one of the standard American texts on hymnody, and remains both important and often inspirational. Like many of my music-related books, this came from my old friend Mary Landrum, whom I mentioned in the previous post. This volume especially will be a reminder of her, for the bookplate in the front identifies it as belonging to her mother.)

- Graham, Benjamin: The Intelligent Investor (in my opinion, the classic investment book. This was a second reading; there will likely be a third and fourth should I live sufficiently long.)

- Edleson, Michael: Value Investing (recommended in the Bernstein book mentioned above. Edleson is another Nobel laureate. I modified my investment plan somewhat based on Bernstein and Edleson.)

- Williamson, Jack: two from the "Legion of Space" series
------- The Legion of Space
------- The Cometeers
(again, a science fiction volume that has gathered dust for decades. Williamson was one of the Grand Masters of the early days of science fiction, and this is pure "space opera" adventure from the 1930's. One can see where George Lucas stole some of his ideas for the Star Wars universe; there is even what amounts to a "Death Star." Williamson does it much better than Lucas, in my opinion.)

- Chesterton, G. K.
----- Heretics
----- Orthodoxy (a second reading)
----- The Ballad of the White Horse (a fourth or fifth reading; I try to get around to this every year on or after the Feast of St. Alfred the Great)

- Campbell, Patricia: Songs in their Heads: Music and its Meaning in Children's Lives (a "music-ed" book that, again, has languished on the shelf for years. Some intriguing and useful ideas here which are applicable to my work with the youth choir)

- Carter, Jimmy: A Full Life. (Carter is one my my heroes. I have his first book, "Why not the best," written as a campaign biography during his presidential run, and now what may be his last book. Knowing of his fight with cancer, I wept several times while reading this account of his "full life." I should write more fully of it elsewhere, but it it worth noting here that in this book, he considers among the important accomplishments of his presidency such things as sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with several world leaders who came to him and asked for it, when they were in positions where they could not publicly acknowledge any interest in such things, and his encouragement of Deng Xiaoping to loosen restrictions on Christianity in response to the normalization of relations with the U.S., toward which Carter had done much.)

- Boswell, James: The Life of Samuel Johnson (This was my other Big Project for the year; a gigantic work about a gigantic character.)

- Williams, Peter and Barbara Owen: The Organ (a second reading. This was mostly drawn from the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, and published as its own volume. It is colored largely by the anti-Romantic views of the authors, viewing the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in organbuilding as an unfortunate aberration. I do not like this book at all, but there is information here that would be hard to find elsewhere.)

and finally:
- Wills, Arthur: Organ (of which I wrote the other day).

Some of these were e-books; I have had a Nook bookreader for a couple of years now, and enjoy it, especially for reading on the transit bus where the lighting is not the best. But this list reminds me that one of the pleasures of Real Books is that they have a history, such as the books from my mother's life as an idealistic young schoolteacher, and Mrs. Landrum, both of them departed this life. E-books do not carry that sort of weight.

I am currently reading "This Day," which is a book of Sabbath poems by Wendell Berry, and "God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism" by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Both are excellent.