"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Monday, June 15, 2009

Cancel Your Own . . . Subscription (William F. Buckley, Jr., 2007)

This book sounded quite interesting in a couple reviews, so I read it. But I didn't find it very interesting.

Buckley is very well known as a "conservative" spokesperson. This went on for many years, starting with the founding of The National Review in 1955. He just died within the past year or so.

I'm guessing I would have agreed with many of his views, even if the term "conservative" now more properly applies to those that seek to preserve existing big government, unions, favor structures, etc. But I never saw the weekly TV show "Firing Line," and didn't read National Review. So don't have much feel for how Buckley actually sounded.

This book mostly had excerpts from a National Review feature called "Notes and Asides." Lots of clever comments, points of grammer, witty letters, communications with then-celebrities or public figures. Etc. Whatever.
Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)