The books I didn’t read
As often as not, I check out books from the library I never read. They sit on my dining room table or in a special pile of library books on the floor nearby, waiting to make my acquaintance.
Like certain cats I’ve known over the years, they’re present, but they don’t call attention to themselves. I’ll thumb through them, put them down, look at them again the next day or so, and then return them to their home in town.
There’s nothing wrong with these books, it’s just that whatever spark of passion drew me to them has vanished. Some are door-stoppers, too fat with words to fit into my limited time for reading. Some attracted me with the wink and a smile of a book blurb that loses its allure overnight while others disappointed my expectations, often, I suspect, revealing some flaw in me rather than in the book.
So, here are four books I haven’t read, three from the library, one a review copy from a publisher, which strike me as deserving a nod and which readers might enjoy and find worth their while. Of course, thousands more equally worthy volumes are sitting on the shelves of libraries and bookstores everywhere, ready to work their magic on those in need or want of what these books offer.
First up is “Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz (Top Shelf Productions, 2023, 440 pages). Graphics artists Luca DeBus and Francesco Matteuzzi are both Italian, skilled cartoonists who very much admire the work of Charles Schulz, creator, of course, of the wildly popular strip, “Peanuts.” Given the hundreds of cartoon panels devoted to Schulz in “Funny Things,” DeBus and Matteuzzi obviously devoted a good deal of time and study to the creation of this visual biograph.
Like these men, I too am a lifelong fan of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy and the rest, but I just wasn’t ready to tackle 400 and more pages of these particular cartoons. Maybe another time.
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Usually I’m a sucker for books about books, fiction and nonfiction, but I just couldn’t get into Shannon Reed’s “Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out” (Hanover Square Press, 2024, 336 pages). All the fare that usually makes for a feast are on these pages: comments about books and authors, teaching literature to the young, personal anecdotes and clever writing. Chapters with titles like “Signs You May Be a Character in a Shakespeare Play,” “The Five People You Meet When You Work in a Bookstore” and “To Learn How to Die (and How to Live)” attracted me, but again it was a no-go. Maybe I’m just burned out right now on books about books.
As the old break-up line goes, “It’s not you, Shannon. It’s me.” In this case, that’s the simple truth.
Professor of Law Jeffrey Rosen attended some of the world’s finest universities, is a prolific author, and is president of the National Constitution Center. Tucked under my arm when I last left the library was his “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America” (Simon & Schuster, 2024, 368 pages). The come-on for me were some of those tags in the subtitle: “Classical Writers,” “Virtue” and “Lives of the Founders.” Open the book, and we find chapters dealing with Thomas Jefferson’s reading list, John and Abigail Adam’s self-accounting, and Ben Franklin on humility and the quest for moral perfection.
This topic fascinates me, and Rosen’s approach to our Founding Fathers strongly appeals, but in this case too many obligations on my part at the time sent this one back home, a casualty of Chronos, mourned but unread. Words attributed to rock legend Frank Zappa sum it up: “So many books, so little time.”
Finally, there’s Owen Strachan’s “The War on Men: Why Society Hates Them and Why We Need Them” (Salem Books, 2023, 256 pages.) At my request, the publisher kindly sent me this book, which addresses a topic in which I take some interest. With one exception, however, none of the outlets for which I write reviews would be interested in a book so heavily religious. Strachan is a professor of theology, which I knew when I asked for a copy, but I hadn’t realized the preponderance of Biblical arguments in his book.
“The War on Men” is well-written, and makes cultural and political points, mostly conservative, that will appeal to many readers. I’ll hang onto the book, and if the mood strikes, I’ll read it one day out of curiosity and pleasure, but for now “The War on Men” and I are mismatched, like one of those online dating scenarios where you meet someone face-to-face for the first time and know immediately that it’s not going to work out, at least not at the present time.
So there you have it, a review of unread books. I know, I know, that’s a bit like a professional food critic who visits a restaurant, never samples the cuisine, then returns home and knocks out a glowing piece for the local paper.
Meanwhile, there in the jumbled pile on the floor are more books, ranging from a scholarly study of the legends of King Arthur to a biography of Tucker Carlson to two Calvin and Hobbes collections. Unlike T.S. Eliot’s mermaids, who will not sing to poor, pitiable Prufrock, some of these books — hope springs eternal — will surely sing to me.
(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
