2024 Kvetching & Books

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past

Related: 2023, 2022

Last year I said I’d do three things in 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.

I did none of these. I have a wonderful history of Australia in my head and notes but I haven’t touched it this year. I started Gibbon and stopped. Alas.

I wrote 25 kvetches including this one, which isn’t too bad in a year where I had a new baby and a new fund. Kvetch readership doubled. Welcome!

My most popular kvetch was Kidmaxxing, which was unexpected. I’ve had a few people tell me I meaningfully influenced them to have one more kid. That’s nice.

Second most popular was The Woman’s Burden, followed by Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes. My most underrated ones (in my view!) were probably Question 7 and Atlanta.

I’m not sure what awaits Kvetch next year. Have many drafts. Taking it one week at a time. Drafts that have been niggling away at me are a history of Australia, what Australian Jewish demographics tells us about cities, prostitution in Japan and Austria, my favourite Jewish religious music, British naval history, Australian ports, the NDIS, and more.

Thanks for reading. Happy Christmakkah!

This is what I read this year:

Non-Fiction

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation by Byrne Hobart, Tobias Huber

Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas

The Renaissance: A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304 - 1576 AD by Will Durant

Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century by David B. Ruderman, The Great Courses

Covenant & Conversation: Genesis: The Book of Beginnings by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

• I am a Sacks maximalist.

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom

• I am a Bloom maximalist. Nobody understands The Merchant of Venice. I should be reading more Shakespeare.

The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending

Churchill, Hitler, and 'The Unnecessary War': How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick J. Buchanan

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping's China by Kevin Rudd

44 Days: 75 Squadron and the Fight for Australia by Michael Veitch

Equality and Authority: a Study of Class, Status and Power in Australia by S Encel

• A very special anthropology of mid-century Australia.

We Dared to Win: The SAS in Rhodesia by Hannes Wessels, Andre Scheepers

Bush War Operator: Memoirs of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, Selous Scouts and Beyond by A.J. Balaam

Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior by Arthur Herman

• When MacArthur agreed to be military advisor to the Philippines in 1935, his package included 0.46% of Philippines defence spending until 1942.

• MacArthur — who accepted Japanese surrender in Tokyo in 1945 — was a direct descendent of Commodore Matthew Perry — of The Last Samurai movie.

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall

Subimperial Power: Australia in the International Arena by Clinton Fernandes

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott

• I’m pretty sure all the tech people quoting it have only read the first chapter. Which, to be fair, is the best.

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

• I suspect paganism peaked in the Italian Renaissance around the Catholic Church…

Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett

Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class by Rob Henderson

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by René Girard

Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

• Did you know you could tax deduct bribes paid abroad for business purposes in Switzerland until 2016?

The Life & Times of Beethoven: The First Angry Man by Robert Greenberg, The Great Courses

How to Listen to and Understand Opera by Robert Greenberg, The Great Courses

How Music Works by David Byrne

• Form precedes function (as Nabokov loved to say)

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

Comanches: The History of a People by T. R. Fehrenbach

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company by Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff

A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca by Andres Resendez

The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

In Defense of Women by H. L. Mencken

Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger

Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War & God by Will Durant

• Don’t ever let anyone publish my works posthumously: “I consider myself a Christian in the literal and difficult sense of sincerely admiring the personality and ethics of Christ, and making a persistent effort to behave like a Christian. I am not quite a saint. I have on several occasions attended and furtively enjoyed theatrical displays featuring the female form. Even in my nineties, I have felt a strong erotic urge, which my recent illness seemed to have knocked out of me; but already I feel it coming back.”

Fiction

Paradise Lost by by John Milton

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney

• I loved this so much I listened to it twice. Read by Seamus Heaney. Self-recommending.

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Voss by Patrick White

• Doesn’t work as audiobook. I know I know fiction never does but I couldn’t help it.

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

• Liked this a surprising amount. Worked as audiobook (an exception!).

Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

Selected Poems by C.P. Cavafy translated by David Connolly