Better Books Better Books

One reader's honest journey through 1,600 books

I have 1,600 books on my shelves. History, philosophy, poetry, fiction — and yes, a few Halo novels. I'm reading every one of them. This is where I write about what I find.

Recent Reading

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Humourous Fiction

Wonderful Stories from the Vinyl Cafe

This one has a lot of heart in it. Each one of the 18 stories really hit me in a way that surprised me. They all revolve around the family of Dave and Morley and their kids Stephanie and Sam. The family doesn’t appear in every story, as sometimes we have the pleasure of following the life of someone outside of the family, but someone the family knows and is a resident of the same town Dave and Morley live in. Dave works at secondhand record store, The Vinyl Cafe, from which the series takes its name. The store wasn’t the backdrop very often in this novel (there are many), which didn’t affect my opinion of the book at all.

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Posts
History

Pressfield's Hellish Gates of Fire

War is hell. Steven Pressfield really pushes that home in Gates of Fire. No guns, no bombs, no drones. Pure human struggle. This makes it seem even more raw, more visceral than today’s at what sometimes seems like disconnected war. The bodies stack up and and up. Men are fighting on top of them. They’re up to their shins in gore, slipping and sliding, trying to maintain a grip on their killing sticks. It’s told through two sets of eyes. One of Xeo, a spartan squire, and the other set that of Xerxe’s historian, who is documenting the tales of the battle being spun from Xeo’s perspective. The zeal with which these men fight for their country seems almost unachievable. The violence and battlefield conditions are absolutely brutal. What gets me most, is how their courage and waxes and wanes, ebbs and flows, just like how it would with any of us. These are the legendary Spartans, and still they experience such fluctuations in intestinal fortitude.

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Posts
Philosophy

You'd Do Well to Follow the Rules for a Knight

This book was outstanding. Ethan Hawke really surprised me here. he has a full grasp of what it is to show true virtue. He’s cobbled together some rules that really speak to me. The rules weave in and out of a wonderful tale he’s spun, regarding his grandfather and some other knights who share the same level of virtue as he. This would make a great gift from a father to a son, if that son would actually read it these days. It’s a fairly quick read, but a read I think people should come back to again and again.

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