What I’ve been reading

1. Roger Lewis, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  An amazing book, full of life and energy on every page, and yes there are 605 of them.  Imagine if Camille Paglia had stuck with it and produced case studies.  The main problem is simply that most people don’t know or care about Burton and Taylor any more?

2. David Caron, Michael Healy, 1873-1941, An Túr Gloine’s Stained Glass Pioneer.  An excellent book, can it be said that Michael Healy is Ireland’s fourth greatest stained glass artist?  Clarke, Geddes, and Hone would be the top three?  It is good to see him getting this attention, but what will happen when so many Irish churches are decommissioned or abandoned or simply never seen?  What does that equilibrium look like?  All the more reason to invest in this book.  What an underrated European tradition.

3. Paul Seabright, the subtitle says it all, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People.  I’ve just started to crack this one open, Paul’s books are always very smart.

4. Sahar Akhtar, Immigration & Discrimination: (un)welcoming others.  Can the idea of wrongful discrimination be applied to immigration decisions?  Maybe you believe this is a pure and simple matter of national autonomy, but what if the potential immigrants are from a former and wronged colony?  From an island nation perishing due to climate change?  Or they were previously pushed off territory that is now part of the host nation?  And yet open borders as an idea also does not work — how should one fit all these pieces together?

5. Austin Bush, The Food of Southern Thailand.  The best book I know of on southern Thailand flat out.  This one has recipes of course, but also photos, maps, anecdotes, and plenty of history.  The food is explained in conceptual terms.  Recommended, for all those with an interest.

6. Michael Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity.  Mostly ends at 1800, this will become one of the standard, must-read histories of Islam and its multiple homes.  The section on India, which is what I have been reading, is strongly conceptual and novel compared to other survey books such as Hourani.  At the very least a good book, possibly a great book.