I read Night during lunch yesterday. The most striking thing I found in the book was how late in the war it occurred.
Wiesel was deported in mid 1944, when the Nazis were well on their way to defeat. Despite getting their asses handed to them by the Soviets, they were still diverting massive resources towards carrying out the Holocaust.
Kind of shows you what they considered more important than winning the war.
I got two copies of **The Black Wolf (**Louise Penny) and a copy of Book of Lives (Margaret Atwood) from various family members at Xmas. I will finish The Black Wolf tomorrow: it is excellent. Will trade my surplus copy of it for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.
A nice trifecta of Can Lit! 
next genre plays/poetry/short stories.
Macbeth - I have seen movie versions but i havenât read it. It was my BiLâs copy, and today would have been his birthday, so it feels a very fitting pick.
We had one Shakespeare play per year of high school including Macbeth. Have not read any Shakespeare since then so it might be an interesting experiment to reread one as an adult.
i believe i have read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Taming Of The Screw
in class we saw the 1968 movie R & J and the 1976 TotS
The 1968 R&J movie was awesome.
Bloodline by Lee Clay Johnson
Recently finished The Book Thief. Currently reading Black Woods, Blue Sky.
Finished Brave New World, which I did not care for. There were some powerful ideas, but the presentation didnât do it for me.
That puts me at 30 books for the year! Top 10 for the year, limiting to 1 book per author:
I already have a long list of books on my list for 2026.
the Empyrean Series (fourth wing, iron flame, onyx storm).A trashy Romantcy or fantasy romance series. The romance is badly written but the fantasy elements are Ok though a somewhat unbelievable plot line in many ways. It was recommended to my wife earlier this year and she bought all 3. She gave up in the 2nd book, Iâm part way through the 3rd but probably wonât get the last 2 when they eventually come out. I am however looking forward to Amazon prime Tv adaptation thatâs in the works as I think the romance might play better on the small screen than in print. If we didnât have them in house i probably wouldnât pick them up.
Was excellent and prescient.
Focused on a geopolitical issue that Canadians have been cncerned about for over 100 years.
next genre up, Horror - The Institute - King
35 books read this year
I finished the Rape of Nanking. I think US education on the Pacific Theater tends to be heavily focused on US vs Japan and mostly glosses over the Sino-Japanese conflict aside from charts of casualty numbers and maps showing the extent of the Greater East Asia co-Prosperity Sphere.
It was an extremely brutal read. If I hadnât been listening to it via audio on long walks, I would have had to put it down several times. The first quarter of the book is highly informative and covers the motivations of Japan and the psychology of its soldiers, and emphasizes that anyone, not just the Japanese, is capable of committing such atrocities. The last quarter covers the aftermath. These sections are more readable than the gruesome middle half which covers the actual rape and is the hardest section to get through.
Should be required reading. At least the last 3/4s of the book. The first quarter, about their âmotivationâ - Iâm not really interested in how they justified rape and torture of civilian women - at least I am interested but I wouldnât call it justification, maybe I would call it psychopathic thought processes.
I donât get how you can conclude that anyone is capable of committing these atrocities. I hope I donât know anyone who is capable of things like these.
See Ordinary Men by Browning.
I suspect you know many people capable of horrendous things. We all do. Even that person you see in the mirror. Yes, even you. And me of course.
you donât know me, but I doubt anyone who does will think Iâm capable of that stuff.
if you think youâre capable of it, thoughâŚ
Says, âAnyone,â not âeveryone.â
So, rando on the street? 1% chance. 100 randoâs on the street? Oh, yeah, a bunch of them. Which particular ones? No idea, and that is not relevant. And, I donât think âindependenceâ can be assumed, due to the human brain. Fucking pack animals.
I donât read âanyoneâ that way.
I do agree that someone in â100 randoâsâ could.
Perhaps you should. Save yourself a lot of trying to be offended.