Sunday Book Review

I intend this to be a weekly feature of this column. More than anything else on this blog it is for my own personal convenience, though I hope some others may discover new books from it as well. The intent will be primarily to motivate me to keep reading worthwhile literature, if I don't read anything worthwhile in a given week I will post a movie, restaurant, TV show, or video game review as a form of public shaming to show I managed to learn nothing new over the previous week. In some cases where length prevents me from completing a work I will be giving partial reviews of what I have completed each week. Braudel's three volume Civilization and Capitalism is near the top of the to be read stack so this will be coming up shortly. While I will be doing some reading from classic works, I'm slowly working my way through Wealth of Nations in addition to other reading for instance, I won't be giving dedicated reviews to these works since I'm not quite hubristic enough to feel I have much to add, though if I feel the need I amy highlight a few passages from works such as this that I feel are being neglected today.

The reviews themselves will be more of a personal commentary than a true book review. It will focus on expressing what I got out of the work or a few parts that struck me as particularly interesting. Mostly, it will be notes in a narrative form that will allow me to go back years from now and recall the general arguments or refer back to particularly interesting passages without having to re-read the whole book. I may also try to pursue the scholarly question of what contribution I think the book makes, particularly in cases where I didn't like the book but feel it needs a more even-handed treatment than my opinion affords it.