re-readable novels

Hugh Hewitt has asked bloggers to name novels they’ve re-read or would re-read.

Here’s my own short list – all books I haven’t seen mentioned on Hewitt. The Amazon.com reviews are good.


The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.

This novel was a huge influence in forming my political consciousness. It features a classic liberal and a classic conservative fighting for the soul of a feckless youth. Deep, rich, powerful arguments from both sides.


Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy.

An unbelievable read, but not for the faint-of-heart. McCarthy’s prose is beyond purple at times, but I loved every ultra-violet word of it. Sometimes I open it up randomly and read a paragraph or two, just to remind myself what can happen when you rub the right words together.


The Man Who Loved Children, by Christina Stead.

Randall Jarrell called it the 20th century’s Moby Dick, and there’s something to that. TMWLC is big, sprawling, and long-winded in parts, but its brilliant and horrifying portrayal of 1940’s family living in Georgetown is riveting (almost) throughout.


Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone.

I’ve re-read this book six or seven times. Stone’s politics, especially later in his career, are awful, but if anyone writes a better American sentence I don’t know who it is.


A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller, Jr.

This 1959 sci-fi classic is frequently voted the best sci-fi book ever written… and it’s especially prescient in this new century when we’re all sitting around waiting for the other (bigger) shoe to drop.

Boom boom boom.

Then what?

the real palestinian problem

In case you missed George Will on ABC this weekend, he had this succinct summary of the real Palestinian problem:

The Palestinian people have been the most execrably led people of the 20th century. Palestinian leaders supported Germany and the central powers in the first World War, Hitler in the second World War, Stalin in the Cold War, Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. That's a losing streak. Tomorrow morning, Palestinian children will get up and go to schools where teachers appointed by the Palestinian Authority and textbooks selected by them will teach them a kind of virulent anti-Semitism akin to that in Nazi Germany. We need ten years of de-Nazification to get over what the Oslo Accords produced when they brought that thug and his "thugocracy" back to Palestine.