2023 Kvetching & Books
"My worldview is measurably different in ways I cannot say aloud in polite company"
🚨🕎🎄One Chrismukkah REQUEST. If you’ve enjoyed Kvetch this year, please share it: recommend it on your Substack, send your favourite essay to a friend, post it wherever you post. Let’s keep this strange, beautiful readership growing. Thanks — I appreciate it!🚨🕎🎄
I’ve posted 37 kvetches this year (including this one) and read 46 books + a handful unfinished. I kvetched thrice on Robert Caro’s exceptional Lyndon B. Johnson biography (Coke Stevenson’s love story, JFK, LBJ’s wife. These may be my favourite pieces — you should read them). A few personal ones (on my grandfather, my boy’s heartbreak, on daughters). A bunch on movies and books and Torah. I’ve been more political than typically inclined (on the Australian Voice referendum, Paul Keating, Australian Jewry). My 5 most read kvetches:
Maybe the sex in Sex and Agency caught folks’ eyes, but to be honest, 1 and 2 are there because Tyler Cowen shared them on Marginal Revolution (obviously self-recommending). And whilst I think they’re both great pieces — Zionism for Aboriginal Australians may be my first serious grapple with a contemporary political issue on this site — I think some of my other pieces are underrated.
In particular, I have a special affection for my Caro series, which I recall writing with a special kind of zeal. It’s always hard to know how they’re read by others, but I reread them in a very particular cadence, the one in which they were written: a frenetic, thrilling disposition.
The Succession finale was topical and a few folks shared Succession: Shiv Misunderstood, but I was especially chuffed by the Ross Douthat read and share — he’s probably my favourite columnist writing today. I didn’t write it to be “Napaulian or Nietzschean” but I’ll take it.
Referring to my conversation with Rob Wiblin, this Twitter cat anon gave me the greatest compliment of the year:
Or maybe it was Mary Gaitskill, whose recommendation is too kind and has brought all sorts of new and thoughtful readers to this place:
I wrote about Mary and our conversation here.
Years ago I used to read Mark Steyn’s blog and skip the ones about cats and jazz. I suspect most of you do that to my posts on Jewish scripture. But what’s the point of having a kvetch that doesn’t pay if you can’t write about whatever grips your fancy? And I am constantly gripped and regripped by the Tanakh anew.
I enjoy my movie posts (obviously), but not really sure what you think of them. Although you seemed to like Barbie well enough (topical!).
Here are Kvetch subscriptions since inception. 2023 grew at a slower rate than the part-year of 2022, but still going up and to the right.
I’ve recently written a little against the grain of my readership, resulting in spikes in unsubscribes. Such posts as Jan Morris’s excellent memoir Conundrum on the transgender experience and Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. That’s the benefit of being unpaid — I can write what I want. I am that I am (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה).
Books
This year has been a great year in books.
wrote that audiobooks don’t count. Almost 100% of the books I list below I listened to. I take notes in-app and usually refer to an online copy afterwards to extract notes. Given humans have been listening to stories for far longer than they’ve been reading them, I’d default to audio consumption being more lucid, not less. In reality I suspect it just varies by person. My wife can’t listen to a thing but reads pathologically fast. But it works wonderfully for me.But more than that, some books are obviously vastly superior when listened to. One such category is the author-read memoir. Listening to Robert Caro, or Werner Herzog or Matthew McConaughey read their own stories — what madman wouldn’t prefer that?
Audiobooks also focus. If I’m listening as I ride, I can’t look at my phone. The medium is less amenable to distraction than books in today’s distraction rich world. Obviously it’s not a substitute though — it’s a complement. I can’t read a physical book when I cycle in and out of work. Denigrating listening to books may be a kind of class signal — look at me, I have time to read lots of books. Or it might signal that you don’t have kids.
Three meta themes around my reading this year:
I’ve been reading in clusters, per the Tyler Cowen method. Not really deliberately, but it’s the first time I’ve done it and I’ve enjoyed it.
I’ve followed authors, reading their broader oeuvres. Caro, Winchester, Hughes, Fehrenbach, Brooks, Durant, Morris, Herman, Bloom, Gwynne.
Perhaps partly as a function of the above, I’m increasingly bumping into characters from other books. Happens all the time, which is a nice confluence of stories and knowledge, but the two I enjoyed the most:
Bumping into industrialist Henry Kaiser from Freedom’s Forge in Caro’s LBJ series being ripped off by LBJ
John Monash wrote an essay on the Wilderness campaign in the American Civil War. Monash’s heroes were “Napoleon, Julius Caesar and – his favourite of all – Stonewall Jackson.”
Thanks for a fun 2023. It means a lot to be able to share these with you. I like it when you comment and write in. Occasionally I even bump into a reader in the real world and it’s weird meeting someone who knows me so asymmetrically. If you’re reading kvetch and you’ve stuck with me through such an eclectic mix of subjects, I’m afraid you’re done for. You can check out but you can never leave.
This is what I have planned for Kvetch for 2024:
I want to finish my history of Australia. I hope it will be one of the best things I’ve done.
Listen to Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Deep dive on Bismarck and maybe Lee Kuan Yew.
No doubt there’ll be much more.
Wishing you a great Christmas / holiday and see you in 2024.
🚨🕎🎄One Chrismukkah REQUEST. If you’ve enjoyed Kvetch this year, please share it: recommend it on your Substack, send your favourite essay to a friend, post it wherever you post. Let’s keep this strange, beautiful readership growing. Thanks — I appreciate it!🚨🕎🎄
Anyway, here are my books for 2023:
United States
"The Path to Power" by Robert A. Caro
"Means of Ascent" by Robert A. Caro
"Master of the Senate" by Robert A. Caro
"The Passage of Power" by Robert A. Caro
"On Power" by Robert A. Caro
"Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" by Ulysses S. Grant
I tweeted about it here.
"Scouting on Two Continents" by Major Frederick Russel Burnham
Cannot recommend enough, a kvetch of extracts sits in my drafts.
"Robert E. Lee and His High Command" by Gary W. Gallagher, The Great Courses
"Lone Star" by T. R. Fehrenbach
Few write as memorably as Fehrenbach, whose work I often cite on here.
"American Republics" by Alan Taylor
This is the book you’d get if you wrote the story of America from the eyes of aggrieved minority blacks and women. Very painful read. But some interesting and new vignettes.
"Hymns of the Republic" by S. C. Gwynne
Australia
One note on Australian books. There doesn’t seem to be that much that is *great* and even less as audiobooks. I’ve read more broadly than usual here to write my big history of Australia.
"Warren Mundine in Black and White" by Nyunggai Warren Mundine
Disappointed Mundine never responded to this review. I thought it was overall flattering but who know. Busy guy!
"The Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes
Definitely a standout, beautifully written. I’m only part way through and the only physical book I’ve read this year.
“Why Australian Prospered” by Ian McLean
This was a reread but it really is excellent.
"A Shorter History of Australia" by Geoffrey Blainey
Blainey is excellent all round.
"Captain Cook’s Epic Voyage" by Geoffrey Blainey
Great at covering the facts, but the bad writing really gets in the way.
"Macquarie" by Grantlee Kieza
"The Brilliant Boy" by Gideon Haigh
"Under Full Sail" by Rob Mundle
"The Commonwealth of Thieves" by Thomas Keneally
"A Jerk on One End" by Robert Hughes
“Down Under” by Bill Bryson
Some good tidbits but all the faffing and funny business isn’t for me.
United Kingdom
Obviously a UK national treasure and the reason I bug my wife about Dyson products.
"Heaven's Command" by Jan Morris
"Victorious Century" by David Cannadine
Very detailed. Probably a bit much for me, but a great overview of the Victorian age.
“Mutiny on Board H.M.S. Bounty” by William Bligh
Two things. 1. The Tahitian natives laughed at Bligh when he explained their God had no parents, no wife and no son. 2. The Tahitian princess had killed all 8 of her kids at birth. Bligh figured it was either a ritual sacrifice or a way for the locals to manage population growth. He thought they should migrate to New Holland (Australia) instead where land was plentiful. Beautiful and promiscuous local girls not withstanding, a false paradise it seems!
“How the Scots Invented the Modern World” by Arthur Herman
“To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Changed the Modern World” by Arthur Herman
Fantastic — I am become an Arthur Herman maximalist. I didn’t love his book on Scots quite as much but this one was as good as his excellent Freedom’s Forge. No electronic copy of this book exists so I plan to make one.
"His Majesty's Airship" by S. C. Gwynne
Memoirs
"How to Know a Person" by David Brooks
I preferred his The Second Mountain. I read Brooks as a strange
"How to Build a Car" by Adrian Newey
"The Deep Places" by Ross Douthat
Douthat is always excellent. I cited him a few times, like here. I haven’t referenced it but the moment that I think about often are 1. Where he literally cries out to God and 2. When he hears the story of Job recited.
"Cinema Speculation" by Quentin Tarantino
Endless gold. "Harvey Keitel wanted to meet a real-life white New York pimp. Not realizing that the “Great White Pimp” was a mythological cinematic creation. So Keitel was forced to do all of his character research with a black gentleman of leisure."
"Every Man for Himself and God Against All" by Werner Herzog
Someone smart on a podcast called this the best memoir ever. It’s not. But I liked it.
"The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig
Calls to Arm
"The Case Against the Sexual Revolution" by Louise Perry
"Bronze Age Mindset" by Bronze Age Pervert
"The Origins of Woke" by Richard Hanania
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche
Some magic lines that I think about often, some went by me.
"A Jewish State" by Theodor Herzl
"The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" by Rashid I. Khalidi
Other history
“Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century” by David Ruderman, The Great Courses
I didn’t appreciate how totally dominated modern Judaism is by its German strains. Modern orthodoxy, reform and conservative Judaism all spring from there.
Shocked at the number of intellectual Jewish converts to Christianity. Voluntary. Of Mendelssohn's six children four converted to Christianity! Seems to be part of German Judo synthesis and total assimilation. Some modern echoes in eg Brooks and Weil. I’d love to plot this over time — while we think of American Jews as especially assimilationist, they are probably those that selected out of assimilation. Maximum assimilationists were murdered or… assimilated.
There really was a profound symbiosis between German and Jewish thought… all the way up to its death in the Holocaust. Shocking that the very place where Jewish thought flowered so fully and contributed so much should be its hell
Spinoza was rightly ex communicated, and of course beloved by every modern liberal
Reform and Conservative Judaism seem silly — East European thinkers probably under covered. Hasidism is becoming only more important and enduring, and interesting that it’s the mystical strain. Buber’s fascination with it is something I will dive into, as well as Soloveitchik.
Does modern Israel produce great theological giants? Has Australia? Kind of fitting that it probably hasn’t, mainly property and retail and industrial tycoons and Zionists.
"1177 B.C." by Eric H. Cline
I get bored by archeological historicism. Just tell me what the story is!
"American Prometheus" by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
"Conquistadores" by Fernando Cervantes
"The Great Heresies" by Hilaire Belloc
This is whatever, but the funniest part is that in his overview of the Great Heresies to Catholicism (Protestantism, Islam, Albigensianism, modernism) Belloc misses (ironically?) that Catholicism is in exactly the same way a heresy of Judaism.
"Heroes of History" by Will Durant
Cannot wait to read more Durant.
"Pacific: The Ocean of the Future" by Simon Winchester
Some wonderful tidbits (the history of Marshall Islands colonisation stands out), but calling Australia a bad citizen of the Pacific because of its refugee treatment bugged me to no end. This is the land of Papua New Guinea and coups in Fiji. Spare me.
Other
“The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion
"Founder vs Investor" by Elizabeth Joy Zalman, Jerry Neumann
Surprisingly practical.
"The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom
"Ruin the Sacred Truths" by Harold Bloom
Reading Harold Bloom on the masters is the pleasure of listening to a master, even if I haven’t read most of the authors and poets he loves and reads to deeply. But enough of Bloom shines through anyway, and he will change you regardless. Like this passage which I choked on:
"I myself love the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible more than I possibly could care for Yahweh, since he has not kept his Covenant with us, whoever we are."
"Iago: The Strategies of Evil" by Harold Bloom
Books I didn’t finish
"The Square and the Tower" by Niall Ferguson
Stopped reading when he began overegging Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US election.
"The Complete Essays of Montaigne" by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. I enjoyed parts of this but so far disappointed. I quoted one passage in my essay on Herzl.
"On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History" by Thomas Carlyle
Very disappointed in this. I’d like to try some more Carlyle but nothing else on Audible. This book was a poor man’s Harold Bloom and Roger Scrutton.
"The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time" by Will Durant
"The Tree of Life and Prosperity" by Michael A. Eisenberg
I really wanted to like this but I’m afraid it’s bad and I wouldn’t say that publicly if I ever thought Eisenberg would read this. Not only is it horribly dated after only a few years — holding up the since publicly outed fraud Dan Ariely as some ethical genius — but its commentary on Genesis is generally uninteresting. I’m annoyed because I feel I could write a much better synthesis of business and Genesis and I regret he’s failed.
"Guide for the Perplexed" by Moses Maimonides
Just way too esoteric and I suspect he’s a bit superseded.
"Embracing Defeat" by John W. Dower
Good but too detailed for me. Nevertheless its passages on prostitutions in post-war Japan are remarkable and I have a post on this in my drafts.
(For what it’s worth — The Nightmare Before Christmas is obviously the best Christmas movie. Maybe followed by The Hebrew Hammer. I wrote about Nightmare’s immigrant message and its Will to Power.)
Nice summary. Look forward to your treatment of these topics — and to your takes on scripture too — in 2024.
1) I'd probably say the Caro series was my favourite this year.
2) I almost always haven't seen recent films yet by the time you post about them, so often I skip to avoid spoils and then forget about them. But that's just me and I see no obvious fix anyway. Unless maybe listing those types of posts one may have missed annually or so?