Reading

Check out my separate reading blog for an index of book reviews and ratings.

Finished reading: We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough πŸ’™πŸ“š

The premise and setting had terrific potential, but one-dimensional characters, plot holes, and poor editing hobbled the story. It felt like a book written under the pressure of an unrealistic deadline. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†

Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2024 πŸ’™πŸ“š

I’m on an essay kick, and the latest β€œBest American” series provided a wide range of thought-provoking takes and introduced me to some new voices. I share my five favorite essays in the full review. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†

Full review.

Nancy Pearl’s Revised ‘Rule of 50’:

When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number is the pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book … When you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a book by its cover.

πŸ’™πŸ“š

Finished reading: On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle πŸ’™πŸ“š

It’s Groundhog’s Day but with an existential slant on the meaning of self, time, mortality, sustainability, and the inevitable progression of love and marriage. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†

Full Review.

Finished reading: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder πŸ’™πŸ“š

A concise summary of the tactics used by totalitarian governments to suppress freedom and democracy. Clear examples from twentieth-century despots support each of the twenty lessons. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†

Full review.

Finished reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer πŸ’™πŸ“š

I’m glad I read this hefty tome. I can put current events and government decisions into the context of what happened in Nazi Germany. I know better what to look for. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†

Full review.

Finished reading: Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard πŸ’™πŸ“š

A recent New Yorker article by Anthony Lane prompted me to read this one, my first Elmore Leonard book. I enjoyed the pacing and dialogue and colorful cast of characters, all set in languid south Florida.

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†

@amylouise on Madame Bovary:

I hope that when you pay attention to the world, see every flower on every oat-stalk and every bumbling country doctor, you find that you can look them into loveliness. I hope that even being bound to a dull community of foolish people could bring unexpected graces. I hope that reality has a richer romance than fantasy.

I loved every word of this review. πŸ’™πŸ“š

Finished reading: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald πŸ’™πŸ“š

See my review for notes and favorite highlights. Still and always β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜….

Finished reading: Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney πŸ’™πŸ“š

McInerney’s great American novel: flawed characters grappling with timeless themes, set in what is arguably the greatest city on earth. I loved it. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…

See my full review for notes and favorite highlights.

Finished: Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† Not King’s best short story collection. I think that award goes to You Like It Darker from last year. But any collection of stories by this generation’s master storyteller is still pretty great.

Full review.

Finished: London Rules by Mick Kerron πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† Another brilliant volume in the wonderful Slow Horses saga. Jackson Lamb is as disgusting and brilliant as ever, with his Slow Horses saving the day yet again from ineptitude of the intelligence service bosses. These are comfort books to savor.

Full review.

Finished: A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† A genre-bending novella with a mix of fantasy, horror and magical realism that pushes the β€˜library as heaven’ story by Borges to its logical conclusion.

Full review.

Finished: Gerald’s Game by Stephen King πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜† Stephen King must have felt he needed a challenge when he started this one. How about a horror novel with just one character handcuffed to a bed with the only way to move the story along is through inner dialogue. Oh, and let that character be a woman, and let that woman be sexually abused by her father as a child. Yep, that would be a challenge.

Full review.

Finished: Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† Another great Malcolm Gladwell read. I think I’ve read all his books now and even took his Masterclass on writing. I listened to the audiobook, which was the perfect format for this one. Gladwell has an engaging reading voice and employed his podcast artistry by including recordings of his interviewees in the audiobook. I love how we weaves together diverse topics into a central theme.

Finished: Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… Rereading a book you haven’t read in 40 years is an interesting experience. I remembered only the bleakness but little of the story itself. I enjoyed most of the book, though all the decades of Hemingway parodies and copycats stole some of its luster. Still, it is a timeless classic that reinvented the novel. Makes me want to go back and read all those books I read when I was young. If this one is any guide, it will be like reading them again for the first time.

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.

Currently reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer πŸ’™πŸ“š

Seems timely.

Finished: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… What a beautiful and poignant book. Hopeful and joyous at the possibilities of life, but bookended by the realities of disappointment and loss.

You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.

Full Review.

Finished: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† Fascinating deep dive into the world of introversion and extroversion. Some meaningful parts of our temperament are genetic and passed down from our parents. If you’re a fussy, highly sensitive baby at four months, there’s a good chance you’ll grow up to be introverted. There seems to be a biological connection between high physical sensitivity and introversion.

Full Review.

Currently reading: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain πŸ“šπŸ’™

This has been an eye-opening book for the ways that extroverts and introverts differ. Bloggers, who Cain suggests are almost all introverts, will share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This hits close to home!

Susan Cain, Quiet quote: Introverts and extroverts also direct their attention differently: if you leave them to their own devices, the introverts tend to sit around wondering about things, imagining things, recalling events from their past, and making plans for the future. The extroverts are more likely to focus on what’s happening around them. It’s as if extroverts are seeing β€œwhat is” while their introverted peers are asking β€œwhat if.”

Reflections on Reading The Story of Civilization

This month, I finished a multi-year reading of Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization, an eleven-volume opus considered one of the finest narratives of world history ever written.

Durant published the first volume in 1935 when he had just turned 50. The tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 1968. Will and Ariel, his spouse and co-author, published the final volume in 1975, a culmination of forty years of writing and scholarship. No author’s body of work has even come close to the scope and duration of this epic history set. Excluding reference notes, the text spans ten thousand pages, covering human civilization from the earliest recorded history through Napoleon’s meteoric rise and fall.

I’ve wanted to read these books since I inherited them from my Grandmother more than twenty-five years ago. I made a few attempts but never got past the first hundred pages. I was too busy or preoccupied with other things to devote the time and focus.

This time was different. First, as a recent retiree, I have the energy to dedicate to a project like this. Second, I approached the reading like a real project. I mapped out the volumes and page counts and calculated that if I read just thirty pages a night, I could read the entire series in a little over a year. I stuck with it, and the little bit of reading every night soon became a habit.

I didn’t finish the books in a year like I planned. The reading stretched out to almost two years. On average, I read just under fifteen pages a day. Yet, it’s striking to see how a little bit of reading each day can add up.

In terms of consistent effort, I’d place the reading of these books on par with the work I put in to earn my MBA degree twenty-five years ago. That two-year program helped me professionally and monetarily; these Durant books changed me in perhaps an even more profound way.

Last year, I wrote about the personal reasons I wanted to read these books. In this post, I’m sharing some reflections on the benefits I’ve taken away from this monumental reading assignment.

Before we get to that, I have some quibbles. While Durant is a masterful storyteller and sometimes poet, the writing feels necessarily dated at times. The focus is too heavily weighted towards Western civilization and Europe. Durant’s interest in the sexual proclivities of historical figures surprised me at first, given the time this was written, but later became tedious. The extended descriptions of famous art and architecture were well-written, but there are easier and better ways to study those now. I found myself skimming a lot of those sections.

Criticisms aside, the Story of Civilization is truly a masterpiece of history. After thinking back on this multi-year reading journey, I’ll group the value I’ve received in three areas:

1. The Past Explained

Before Durant, my knowledge of world history stemmed from high school classes and isolated deep dives into specific events and people. My internal timeline of when and where things happened over the eons was a mixed-up jumble.

The Story of Civilization corrected all that. It starts at the very beginning with a patient professor chatting beside you the entire way. It’s the same wise voice describing the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt as the Goths invading Rome, the dark ages of inquisitions and crusades, a spark then roaring fire of the Renaissance, the return to science and reason, before ending with Napoleon stewing in exile in St. Helena. It’s one continuous story with no gaps or omissions.

These books exposed me to every notable event and person in our shared history. Not just the Kings and Queens, but the composers, the artists, and the philosophers; the writers and scientists and architects; the prophets, the saints, and the heretics. It is not just about major events or people but also insights into the economies, the everyday life of peasants and the middle classes, their religious beliefs, their customs and morals, and their ideas on family and community.

By reading these books in a relatively short time span and taking hundreds and hundreds of notes, I now have a well-calibrated compass of the when, what, and why of human history. I’m able to draw from this knowledge with most everything else I read. I can place the context of practically any historical figure or event in reading that my eyes might have glossed over before now. This has made my post-Durant reading life a much richer experience.

2. Perspective on Humanity

Taking in the entire written history of civilization definitely gives you a new perspective on human nature. It’s not good. Reading example after example of the corrupting effect of power held by the few over the many is depressing. Or how organized religions are both awful and necessary to the stability of civilization. Or how freedom and equality seem like natural feel-good bedfellows but are, in truth, mortal enemies. Or how the rich get richer and richer until the poor rise up. Or how democracy as a form of government rarely lasts.

A sorry spectacle of generals climbing over slain rivals to power, to be slain in their turn; of pomp and luxury, eye-gouging and nosecutting, incense and piety and treachery; of emperor and patriarch unscrupulously struggling to determine whether the empire should be ruled by might or myth, by sword or word.1

History provides a needed perspective to help us navigate turmoil and uncertainty. Study enough past civilizations, their rise and their fall, and you can’t help but see consistent patterns and inflection points in the world around us. No one can truly predict the future, but surely our shared history is a powerful guide, given how consistently the past repeats itself.

In so many ways, history shows what a privilege it is to be alive during this time of democracy and relative peace. Our past is riddled with countless atrocities, warfare and pointless bloodshed, inquisitions, dictatorships, and crazed emperors. Yet, witnessing so many civilizations fail over the millennia, we must acknowledge this current peace and tranquility will not, cannot last.

That said, there’s room for optimism. For every hundred tyrants, there’s a philosopher or scientist or artist whose gifts to humanity have pushed us forward as a society. Here’s Durant:

Let us agree that in every generation of man’s history, and almost everywhere, we find superstition, hypocrisy, corruption, cruelty, crime, and war: in the balance against them we place the long roster of poets, composers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and saints. That same species upon which poor Swift revenged the frustrations of his flesh wrote the plays of Shakespeare, the music of Bach and Handel, the odes of Keats, the Republic of Plato, the Principia of Newton, and the Ethics of Spinoza; it built the Parthenon and painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; it conceived and cherished, even if it crucified, Christ. Man did all this; let him never despair. 2

3. The Meaning of Life

During the height of my working life and career, I dreamed of one day retiring to my little book-lined study to read and think through the mysteries of life. I’m not religious. I studied philosophy in college and maintained an avid interest in Stoic thinking, but I never had the proper time to bear down on the crux of the problem: why are we here? What is the meaning of all this?

I hoped one day to find the answers buried in the pages of my many books.

I didn’t realize when I started reading The Story of Civilization that Durant was a seeker of these same questions. With every spiritual movement, every religion, every saint, every philosopher, he was there by my side, poking and probing for the answers to questions that bothered us both.

Did Durant help me find what I was looking for? Did I discover the true meaning of life? Not exactly. Maybe the answers I seek can’t be found in a book. And yet, I did find comfort in the parallels between the we-are-all-one views of the ancient Upanishads, repeated and examined so logically by Lucretius and unearthed once more by the 18th-century free-thinking Deists.

You often hear that ancient philosophers conversed with one another over the centuries, adding to, refuting, and affirming each other like some modern-day Reddit thread. Durant’s moderation of these thinkers throughout the books made that conversation come alive in ways I would have surely missed had I studied this piecemeal. I came here for history but found insight in philosophy. I am wiser for Durant’s company.

What does it matter by what road each man seeks the truth? By no one road can men come to the understanding of so great a mystery.
β€” Symmachus 3

A Personal Legacy

My Grandfather gave my Grandmother the first six volumes of The Story of Civilization as a Christmas gift in 1959. He passed away five years later, the year before I was born, so I never got the chance to meet him. As a widow, my Grandmother read these books carefully, as proven by her many cryptic scribbles in the margins. I knew her as a devout Presbyterian, but her underlining and exclamation marks show that, like Durant, she also questioned her religion, faith, and life’s true purpose. She donated most of the books from her large family library when she downsized to a senior living apartment. She kept the Durant books and just a few others. She cherished these books.

I wish I had realized she didn’t own the complete set. I would have bought them for her. I ended up buying the remaining five books on eBay. Her marginalia ends after six volumes; mine continues.

Maybe in thirty or forty years, my daughter will pull one of these well-loved books down from her shelves and flip through the yellowed pages, scanning all the scribbles and vertical lines and exclamation points in the margins, stopping to puzzle over why a particular sentence or paragraph was marked. You can tell much about a person from what they write in books. Maybe that is legacy enough. Or, maybe, when the time is right, she will decide to embark on the same voyage as her father and great-grandmother, walking along amiably with Durant and two silent pilgrims.

Reading Advice

The physical books that make up The Story of Civilization are long out of print, but you can sometimes find a nice set collecting dust in a used bookstore. eBay usually has sets for sale in the $100-$200 range, which is considerably cheaper than the cost of an MBA.

You can buy the complete set on Kindle, but I don’t recommend it. The file size caused my Kindle to lock up, though the individual books work fine. When I traveled, I left the hefty physical books at home and read on Kindle instead. Amazon has periodic sales of various books within the series for as low as $2 each, and I ended up buying most of them that way.

You can buy or borrow audiobook versions on Libby. I listened to parts of the series on walks and drives but found them more challenging to follow than in print.

My advice is to buy the set in hardback. Put the books on your shelf. Let them marinate. Pick up a volume and thumb through it every once in a while. And when you’re ready, go easy. Read a little every day. Harvest the time you might have wasted on social media. Savor the writing and the story. Write notes in the margins. Reflect on what you’ve learned. You might be amazed at the distance you’ll travel.

Have you read The Story of Civilization or have plans to read it? Let me know in the comment section below.

  1. Will Durant, The Age of Faith, page 428. ↩
  2. Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, page 657. ↩
  3. Will Durant, The Age of Faith, page 35. ↩

The post Reflections on Reading The Story of Civilization appeared first on Robert Breen.

Finished: Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… This short book oozes with wisdom with the help of Ken Liu’s wonderful translation and notes. Read this one slowly and set aside time for reflection. So much of the advice is contrary to conventional western views that it can seem non-sensical. But try, you must.

Can you open yourself to your sensesβ€”quieting the mind like water?

Death is good. Senescence is good. The beginning is good. The end is good. You are, like all things in the cosmos, swimming in the flux of Dao.

Currently reading: Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Laozi πŸ’™πŸ“š

To solve the hard you must begin with the easy; To do something big you must start very small. All difficulties must be resolved through simple steps. All grand deeds must be performed through tiny details.

Finished: Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue by Lee Gutkind πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† An interesting selection of essays from the print run of the Creative Nonfiction literary magazine. There were some essays that appeared to stretch the boundaries of truth, but that’s the creative part I guess.

Full Review.

Finished: The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜† The eleventh and final volume of the Story of Civilization, covering the years from the beginning of the French Revolution through Waterloo. Napoleon’s rise, dictatorship, stunning victories and ultimate defeat were thrilling to read.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. β€” Napoleon

Finished: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… Donald Sutherland did a wonderful job narrating this audiobook. It was nice to reacquaint myself with Hemingway’s short and simple sentences, yet so full of energy. Made me yearn for the ocean.

Finished: Babel by R.F. Kuang πŸ’™πŸ“š

β˜…β˜…β˜†β˜†β˜† I tried to like this book. It has all the elements of a book I would love: etymology, 19th century England, a diverse set of characters, magic, and an academic setting (Oxford, no less!). But I found it slow and repetitive, filled with one-dimensional, unlikable characters, and lecture after lecture on how the rich and powerful mistreat the poor, especially those who aren’t white and British, except for those that are poor and British. It took me almost two months to finish this, and it was a struggle.

I appreciate the idea behind the story, but not how it was told. Not every book is for every reader.

Full Review.

Ah, Patrick O’Brian. He was truly one of a kind. If you haven’t discovered Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, there’s not a moment to lose. πŸ’™πŸ“š

Patrick O'Brian from Post Captain: "Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone. All under sentence of death, often ignominious, frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honour, that deadly, weak and silly notion."

Finished reading: Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks πŸ’™πŸ“š

An entertaining book filled with practical advice on how to improve your storytelling, whether in front of a live audience, on a date, or in a written essay. Dicks shares examples of his own stories, then breaks down why they work. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜†

<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/125484/2025/dd54e41e-b5b4-42ca-bc9a-83d3b708188c.png" width=“600” height=“337” alt=“Quote from Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks: “Storytellers end their stories in the most advantageous place possible. They omit the endings that offer neat little bows and happily-ever-afters. The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results."">

Finished reading: Fallen Leaves by Will Durant πŸ’™πŸ“š

In 208 eloquent pages, Durant shares his views on death, religion, education, war, politics, spirituality, and, through it all, the meaning of life. Truly a gift to humanity from a scholar who devoted his long life to the study of history. β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…

Full Review.

Photo of a paper book book: Fallen Leaves by Will Durant