2025 Readings 117

 As I'm drawing to a close in this Year of Reading - or Year of Recording What I Read - or Year of Reading New Things - or Year of Reading Weird Shit - I've been reflecting on some of the new authors that I've experienced. One of my new discoveries is Dino Buzzati. Previously I had written about his short novels, The Singularity and The Stronghold, both of which I loved. It's amazing to me that a person who has read a hell of a lot for decades can discover new folks, not simply getting around to reading books that I've neglected, but coming across people that I had never heard of previously (again, I blame my wretchedly poor Hoosier education). Buzzati may be my most cherished new discovery from this year. This afternoon I finished a short story collection from across his long career: The Bewitched Bourgeois: Fifty Stories. Some of the short stories reminded me of The Singularity while others reminded me of The Stronghold, but they deny equal categorization. There often is a quiet, vague sense of dread, which is routinely counter-balanced by an odd humor, and he was clearly quite content to leave the reader mystified. I think my favorites were "Seven Floors," "Personal Escort," "The Bewitched Bourgeois," "Appointment with Einstein," "The Saucer Has Landed," and "The Writer's Secret," although even listing these few doesn't do justice to how much I enjoyed the entire collection, which stretched from the 1930s to the 1980s. Highly recommended.

I will, in a couple days, post a summary of the books I read this year.

Missing An Entire Country

 As is apparent, I'm always creating new challenges for myself to fuel my posts on this long-suffering blog (Proust, Pessoa, Marcus Aurelius, Faith, 2025 Books Read, next year's 2026 Films Watched). Consequently, and especially since I dropped off of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (a couple years ago), I've been devoting more time to the blog (and even if I'm the only one who reads the silly thing it's still time well-spent). However, it dawned on me that there doesn't seem to be anything here relating to the Netherlands (which used to be tagged as Holland for some reason). Seriously, there was only one post, from fifteen years ago, relating to an even older trip. I mean, I haven't spent much time in Amsterdam, but I have passed through there. So why don't I have anything? On Janet and my first trip to Portugal together we passed through Amsterdam on the way back, and I know I sent pictures to people, but I couldn't fine any on my phone. I popped back onto Facebook on the sly (partially for reasons relating to this summer's move), thinking that I must have posted something there, but there was nothing. Bizarre. Maybe it's locked away in a file somewhere - or on my camera, maybe? Weird. It's like an entire country disappeared. One of my goals is to try and sort out where those pictures are hiding.

By way of recompense to the Dutch here's a picture that I snapped during our crazy trip back from Portugal (matched only by the nightmare of getting to Portugal) as we passed through Amsterdam. It was a 100 degrees, and, allegedly, it was the only time it had ever reached triple digits in the country's history (which I don't necessarily believe, although I remember people talking about it at the time).

2025 Readings 116

 On Christmas Day we drove down to Pittsfield, Massachusetts to visit Janet's mom in her assisted living center, have a holiday meal, and then hang around the next day to take her on an extended Walmart shopping extravaganza. (maybe more on on that later). On the way day and back we listened to Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. This is hardly the first time I've read or listened to that classic, but I've been deliberate and consistent in recording all of my readings for the year, so it was essential to include this one. Every year we tend to pick out a different performance, and this year I downloaded Tim Curry's rendition. It's a very well-thought of version, although I would argue a bit too highly praised - some of the voices were a bit too similar to each other, and often Scrooge's voice was pretty whiney. I'm actually completely OK with having someone read it without giving voice to the different characters, but if you're going to do it then I suppose you should be judged for it. It's still really solid, and, well, it's Dickens, so you really can't go wrong. As I've often opined, you could make a very compelling argument that A Christmas Carol might be the most influential book written over the last couple centuries. Obviously, highly recommended, and I can't imagine a holiday season that would not include another reading of one of my all-time favorite pieces.

Holiday Breakfast of Excellence

 Going an tire month (that is, our Christmas break in the unreal world of academia) without seeing my friends is, of course, impossible (what happens next year is anybody's guess). Consequently, it was necessary to schedule a Holiday Breakfast of Excellence at the TASTee Grill. As usual, the topics of conversation were varied and excellent, including an inspired discussion of what makes a great biography.

Sanford, appearing as either an Old Testament prophet or a Marxist theorist.

Erik and Kevin, two regular members of the BofE, enjoying the holiday festivities.

A rare appearance from the excellent Steve.

Afterward I had to make a quick run by Santa's for some homemade Christmas cookies and frozen scrapple (appropriate for a Philadelphia-born elf).

Layering Up

 This series of pictures came together rather organically, as Janet and I had to laugh at the layers of CFL swag that I was naturally putting on to prepare myself to go dig out the cars after yesterday's snow storm. Seriously, why doesn't Canada just go ahead and give me citizenship already?

Winnipeg Blue Bombers t-shirt: check.

Edmonton Elks long sleeve t-shirt: check.

Toronto Argonauts sweatshirt and Hamilton Tiger-Cats toque: check.

2025 Readings 115

 After so much anguish and so much mourning, so many tears and so many tricks, so much hate and injustice and despair, what are we to do?

I just finished Ignazio Silone's Fontamara, the first book in his Abruzzo Trilogy (the second is Bread and Wine, which I reread a couple weeks ago). Much like Bread and Wine, Fontamara includes a goodly amount of humor to somewhat balance out the unrelenting misfortune doled out to the cafoni (peasants) by the townspeople and officials and the Catholic Church during the Mussolini dictatorship. Early in the book those in power, even petty power, make it clear that they're not worried about the cafoni because always suffer and the no how to suffer, which only justifies more suffering.

Jokes of that kind are not easily forgotten, even if the town loafers constantly think up new ones. So our first thought was that the diversion of the stream was a practical joke too. After all, it would be the end of everything if men started interfering with the elements created by God, and diverted the course of the sun, the course of the winds, and the course of the waters established by God. It would be like hearing that donkeys were learning to fly, or that Prince Torlonia was no longer a prince, or that cafoni were no longer to suffer from hunger - in other words, that the eternal laws of God were no longer to be the laws of God.

Sadly, what hit me while reading was how true this sentiment still was in so much of the world, and how the wealthy and powerful in America were equally guilty of believing it to be true.

This book, and this trilogy, is highly recommended. I'm looking forward to reading more books by Ignazio Silone.

Endless Swag

 And here's a present that I gave myself for Christmas, a sweet Nathan Rourke BC Lions jersey. I generally think that the Lions have the ugliest uniforms in the CFL, but I'm sold on this alternate version. I'm getting desperately close to having jerseys for every team in the CFL.

For some reason these alternate jerseys were on sale, which you find about if you're an insider for the team and you get email updates - of course, I'm an insider for nine teams.

This should really be a jersey for our entire CFL fantasy league since everyone of us chose Nathan Rourke every week (unless we went with Bo Levi Mitchell - or, sadly, when Jack and I chose a player who was sitting on the bench that week).