Finished reading Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. Reporting on the show trial of the bureaucrat who kept the trains running to Auschwitz, Arendt uses it as a narrow lens to look at the Holocaust. Her discussions of then-modern Germany and Israel are not generally relevant today, but the question that will keep coming back to me is how to resist from within such a system.
Christmas was delightful: Mom and Greg and Jocelyn and the kids came over. The kitchen victory was that we’d prepared all food the preceding days, and only had to reheat things.
Finished rereading The Ionian Mission by Patrick O’Brian (Aubrey–Maturin series, book 8). We’ve kind of settled into the sweet spot of the series, if memory serves, and in any case this book is its own sweet spot, a pretty balance of sailing, spycraft, politics, and interpersonal drama, along with a return to the beloved H.M.S. Surprise.
Finished reading The Citadel of the Autarch (as the second half of the Sword & Citadel compilation). This was far and away my favorite of the four books, with a narrator who finally seems human, and something of an explanation for some of the seemingly-irrational events of the earlier books. Was the payoff worth it? Yes; I’m still not a fan of the semi-inscrutability of the earlier books, but they had their own compensating virtues.
Finished reading The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe (as the first half of the Sword & Citadel compilation). The narrator seemed even more of a character, and less a pawn of the author, than in book two. Not coincidentally I enjoyed this book more than the previous two.