Weekend Parting Shot: Building the Perfect Library

Happy Friday, gentle readers. I hope this weekend provides you with time to relax, refresh, and renew. As for me, I will spend the weekend kicking myself in the posterior for having fixed our sprinkler system. Between the sprinklers and the monsoons, our backyard is starting to look like a patch of land from the Triassic Period. I will spend this weekend pushing a lawnmower and avoiding triceratops.

Normally, I reserve this space for snarky comments about some obscure news item, and I shall return to that format next week. After all, in the Biden era, the jokes are plentiful and pretty much write themselves. But I have a pet project that I want to share with you.

I am a book nut. I have shelves of books that I will eventually get around to reading, and my wife has decided that I am not allowed in a Barnes & Noble unsupervised. I have no one to blame but myself. Looking over my stacks, I began to wonder if there were some books that I may need to add to my collection. That got me thinking about what books everyone should read. With that in mind, I decided to ask people in and around the conserv-o-sphere for their suggestions. I asked a wide variety of folks for their suggestions. For those who did not reply, your contributions will be missed. To those who did, you have my thanks. Without further ado, here are…

The Books Everyone Should Read (As Told to Me by Various Famous People)

Andrew Klavan, author, screenwriter, and host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on The Daily Wire:

Along with the Bible, this is the official list. All others are bogus.

• The Iliad
• Plato’s Trial of Socrates Dialogues
• Nicomachean Ethics
• The Aeneid
• Ovid’s Metamorphosis
• Confessions of Augustine
• The Divine Comedy
• Shakespeare’s Plays
• Brothers Karamazov
• Magic Mountain

Spencer Klavan, author, podcaster, and editor at The Claremont Institute and American Mind:

• The Bible
• The Aeneid
• Machiavelli’s Prince
• The Great Gatsby
• The Complete Works of Shakespeare (cheating a little, but you can get them all bound in one volume!)
• The Brothers Karamazov
• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
• Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Don Quixote
• Milton’s Paradise Lost

Victor Davis Hanson, historian, author, and podcaster:

• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
• Petronius, Satyricon
• Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople
• Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain
• Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present- 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
• E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed
• Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat
• John Keegan,  The Face of Battle
• Knut Hamsun, Growth of the Soil
• Joseph Conrad, Victory

Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee:

• C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (“Lewis was able to see around corners we’re only just turning. It’s a work well worth revisiting.”)

Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA:

• Man’s Search for Meaning
• Brave New World
• 1984
• Comfort Crisis
• Age of Entitlement

Larry Elder, presidential candidate, author, and broadcaster:

• Of Human Bondage
• Up From Slavery
• Free to Choose
• Catcher in the Rye
• 1984
• Race and Culture
• The Fountainhead
• Native Son
• Bonfire of the Vanities
• From Time Immemorial

 Dave Rubin, author and host of The Rubin Report:

• 12 Rules for Life
• The Madness of Crowds
• The Parasitic Mind
• Still the Best Hope
• How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps
• Black Rednecks and White Liberals
• Irreversible Damage
• Billions and Billions
• The Courage to Be Free
• Don’t Burn This Book

Michael Medved, broadcaster, author, and film critic

• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
• Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert
• This Is My God by Herman Wouk
• Rebels And Redcoats: The American Revolution Through The Eyes Of Those That Fought And Lived It by George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin
• The American Miracle by Michael Medved
• The 10 Big Lies About America by Michael Medved

Peachy Keenan, author of Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War, contributor to American Mind and The Federalist:

• Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia
• My Antonia, Willa Cather
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
• Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney
• I am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe
• The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote

And finally,

Lincoln Brown, some random guy who writes for PJ Media:

• The Bible
• City of God, St. Augustine
• The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
• Art of War, Sun Tzu
• Democracy in America, Alexis De Tocqueville
• The Collected Works of William Shakespeare
• Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
• The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
• The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers
• The Bible Among the Myths, John N. Oswalt
• Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Dashiell Hammett, Complete Novels

You didn’t think I wasn’t going to slip my list in there, did you?

Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

Wine Recommendation: Because nothing goes better with a good book than a good wine, except maybe a really good scotch.

So it is summer. During summer, you want something nice, light, and refreshing. A wine that will go great with some grapes and cheese on the back deck or that will allow you to become just a little tiddly after that 5K or bike ride. My wife suggested this wine after having a glass following a bike ride through a local canyon. I give you the 2021 Simonsig Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc.

This wine was a really nice surprise. It is extremely dry. Think Sahara or Mojave. It also tends to the acidic side. As such, it made my list of favorites. And, it is very crisp. I picked up a very nice hint of citrus, specifically lemons. Other reviewers say they can taste melon and a little bit of peach. I didn’t detect peach at first, so I went the extra mile and made the sacrifice to taste it again. And yes, there is some peach, but it does not override the overall taste. This is the perfect summer wine, so if you have spent the day out doing something strenuous, drink plenty of water. But when you get home and get showered, pour yourself a glass of this wine. As I said above, it would go well with some cheese and fruit, but it would match up nicely with seafood, like shrimp or crab. Depending on your tastes, you could even pair it up with sushi. It is normally priced around $11.00 to $14.00. My bottle was on clearance for $12.50. It is well worth keeping around for the warmer months. It’s best when enjoyed within two years of the vintage.

That’s it for me. Have a good weekend. Please pray that a velociraptor does not eat me while I mow my yard, and I’ll see you on Monday.