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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   855 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Lewis' The Screwtape Letters to my list.

About to read, when I get the chance, "Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance" by Andrew Hadfield thanks to a link from another book I just finished, "Thomas More: A Life and Death in Tudor England" by Joanne Paul.

Lest this give the impression that I'm very scholarly in my reading, the book I finished reading last night was an anthology of horror stories dating from the 1920s to 2000 from British Library collections, "The Wayfarer’s Weird: Wild Tales of Uncanny Rambles". Christmas and ghost stories go hand-in-hand!

EDIT: Part of the fun of the More book, for a certain definition of "fun", is reading about his trial for refusing to swear the oath about the Act of Succession (passed to make any children by Anne Boleyn the legitimate heirs to the throne and bypass his daughter by Katherine of Aragon), which involved the vexed question of the king's marriage and Act of Supremacy. More was condemned to death as a traitor for refusing to swear.

A year later, that same queen and marriage and child was all up in the air as Anne Boleyn was tried and executed, her marriage annulled, her child declared a bastard, by the king who had caused More's death.

I've been reading King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, on Jungian psychology. It makes the point that there are positive mature masculine patterns/archetypes/stereotypes, and the book goes over how they look like. I'm probably aiming at the Magician pattern and coming from the precocious child pattern.

I've been motoring through books lately.

Read Eig's biography of Muhammed Ali. Brilliant work, Eig is really the platonic ideal of a serious mainstream biographer. He does a perfect job of writing a well sourced well researched book that is neither hagiography nor hit piece, that shows the controversies and conflicts of Ali's life while also showing the heroism. Ali himself is such an important figure in American history, part Forrest Gump and part Martin Luther King. I enjoyed it so much I immediately started Eig's biography of MLK Jr. Both are fascinating. I never realized just how much Ali's management stole from him, nor just how evil the Nation of Islam really was. We remember them today as quirky dudes in bow ties, but they were both so much more ignorant and so much more evil than that.

Read Hemingway's A Movable Feast. I love Hemingway, and the book was great. So many things in it that we typically think started much later.

Started Stoner on audiobook from its wide reputation. It's well written, but I can't manage to get into it. Idk, it's short, so no harm done to grind through it.

Chains: Unbound Book 11 By Nicoli Gonnella.

edit: fixed the book title

Recently finished Card's Worthing Saga, which was interesting, though I was a bit disappointed by the ending.

I also read The Folding Knife, which was wonderful, though tragic.

Tried to start the series Manifest Delusions, but had to stop despite the cool premise because of the absolutely gratuitous nasty sex and violence. I really hate how common that is in modern fantasy.

Also just started The Courage to be Disliked.

Seven-eighths of the way through Cryptonomicon. Determined to finish it before the year is out, which means thirty-six pages a day.

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