Reading Still Matters

The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943 by James Holland is a gripping account of the Allied invasion of mainland Italy from the beach landings near Messina and Salerno. The campaign in Italy was meant to be short and low risk, but it turned out to be anything but.  Between September and December 1943, the Allied powers and the Germans engaged in brutal combat that essentially stalled at the Gustav Line south of Rome.       Savage Storm is the first book by James Holland that I have read and so I was pretty excited to read it and get a sense of what Holland is all about. I chose Savage Storm because Canada did play a pretty significant role in the fighting and so I wanted to read up on that aspect of the history as well. I am Canadian after all.       And I really enjoyed Savage Storm . Unlike any military history books I have read, Holland used the journals of combatants from both sides to personalize the conflict in a pretty unique wa...

Ryan Holiday recently posted a video on YouTube about 26 Reading Rules for 2026. This looked to be a fun post playing on Ryan's approach to reading and recommending books, but with a nod to the new year. Basically, a content creator creating book creator content and promoting his own business.  And in my view, that's all great.   However, the video ended up generating a number of reaction and response videos on YouTube and possibly other platforms where people discussed how they felt about those rules, whether they applied to their reading lives and whether it was appropriate to have rules at all.  From my perspective, I say let there be rules and let there be no rules - it's all up to you.  I am not going to do a reaction or a response to Holiday's specific rules 1 through 26.  That is too much work.  But I do have four main rules that I use to guide my reading or at least prevent my reading from becoming somebody else's project. I don't want to have ...

T he Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie was unexpectedly fascinating!  Over the last few years, I have been working at building my knowledge of the history of the Americas, including the history of its first inhabitants as well as their struggle with European powers. And this book didn't disappoint.      The Incas were one of the great imperial powers on the South American continent. From a small territory surrounding Cusco, they exploded on a path of military conquest and imperial domination that was triggered by an attempted invasion of their heartlands.       In fact, MacQuarrie's book really does a good job of establishing the history of the Incas, their culture, and their approach to maintaining power.  The Incas were ruthless, but like the Romans, they were also builders.  They used labour requirements to ensure improvements were made across the empire, important resources warehoused, and peace functionally maintained withi...

I have to say that I really enjoyed Alexander at the End of the World, the Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great . Kousser's fantastic work focuses on the period of time following the initial conquest of the Persian empire, although there is build up to that event, so you don't have a lot of prior knowledge to read this one.          Indeed , the book really digs in as Alexander is attempting to get the Persian empire under control, eliminate rebellions, put any challenge to rest. This process takes his armies further from Macedonia and deeper into Asia, and all of the way to distant lands like Afghanistan. His armies and camp followers march through mountain passes, fight their way through heavily defended valleys, and onto plains dominated by ancient horse tribes.  It's all quite remarkable really.     P erhaps even more interesting are the internal conflicts that Alexander has to manage in order to make this new conquest work. Bring...

I have been and remain a huge fan of Roman history and I absolutely love visiting the Eternal City.  Recently, I have been taking more narrow looks into specific aspects of Roman history, rather than broad subjects like the fall of the Republic.  Taking a narrower look means focusing in on themed time periods, certain wars, or individual emperors.        In January of this year, I read Nero: Matricide, Music, and Murder in Imperial Rome by Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth. Published in 2022, this is a nuanced, modern biography of the Roman emperor Nero that aims to rehabilitate his reputation from that of one of history’s most infamous rulers. Rather than repeating ancient scandal-driven narratives, Everitt and Ashworth present a more complex portrait that blends political history, cultural analysis, and psychological insight. Really, they make the case that Nero wasn't all that bad.       But before g etting into t he scope of the bo...

I recently read Endurance by Alfred Lansing. And to be honest, I was under the impression that I was the only one not to have read this famous account of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–1917 (disastrous) Imperial Trans‑Antarctic Expedition. But I have since learned there are many people who haven't picked this one up, and if you are one of those people who have not read Endurance then you definitely should.        A couple of things I would mention before getting into this review.  First, the book was originally published in 1959. And if you are worried that the language might be old timey or stuffy or whatever, don't be too concerned. This one is extremely well written and reads like it could be written this year. So definitely not old timey.       Second, Lansing was close enough to events to have had the chance to talk and discuss the events with at least some of the crew. I can't remember now if he talked to all of them or not. An...