A Friday Reads for 19 May 2026!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hello book. Well, it's Friday and that usually signals some sort of reading progress video. A Friday reads or a weekend reads or a Monday read, something like that where we stop what we're doing and uh catch each other up on how our reading's been going for the week.

[00:00:19]Uh, and I like to do these videos, too, even though they're a little bit of a problem for me because it's literally all I do. I know that in the talk that it that resulted from Dwight Garner's article about how there are so few professional book reviewers left in the world, left in the country. I know that in the talk that resulted from that, the same head shot of a handful of book reviewers showed up on all the response videos. My headshot was nowhere to be found, but nevertheless, it is all that I do. Uh I had a very very good reading week. The my reading weeks in most of 2026 have been so good. Mainly because my little dog really doesn't like exercising anymore. I actually have to convince her to go on long walks. And once we're out for 20 minutes and she realizes that it's a long walk, often times she will want to just stop and cuddle and maybe even suggest coming back home, which I do, but I hate to do it because I mean I'll do what she asked me, but I hate to do it because it's good for her. It's good for both of us to do nice long walks, but uh that results in huge stretches of time where I am not doing anything but reading. Uh I do write every day. I have deadline work almost every day, but I am the fastest gun east of the POS, so that's not a big time drain. I'm not agonizing over my pros. Uh, this this last week, not counting rereads or workrelated reads, I read 26 books and I went down a number of a number of different odd side tangents that I will try to encapsulate in this Friday Reads. This Friday reads will not cover much less discuss everything that I read, but I want to show you some things anyway.

[00:02:05]Give you a hint of a taste of what that reading week was like. I guess I could make Friday reads that are two hours long and just literally cover everything. Uh but uh I want to be in the team spirit here. So we'll start off on uh on the iPad first. I read the newest version, the newest edition to the Penguin Monarch series. I could swear this particular Monarch had already been covered. Uh, but I got this in the mail and thought and it seemed to be packaged as a new thing. This is by Sean Cunningham and it's a biography of Henry VIII, uh, the founder of the Tutor Dynasty.

[00:02:38]It's a these Penguin Monarchs books are very short. They're 150 160 pages something like that. They're meant to be more than a Wikipedia entry, uh, but less than a full dress gigantic, you know, biography. Um, most of the time when I have read these things, I have found them not to be all that much more than a Wikipedia entry, especially if by a Wikipedia entry on, for instance, Henry VII, you include all of the hotlinary subjects, which of course you would in a biography of Henry, you would want, like for instance, if you went to the Wikipedia entry for Henry VIIth and just read it. Okay, that's shorter than this book. But what if you added on the link that you click to his mother to her biography or to uh Richard III and his biography or uh well you you get the his wife. You get the point. And also if you do that with a with a Wikipedia entry usually of any of the monarchs covered in this series, you get something that's not all that much shorter.

[00:03:47]The real the real burden for a series like this is going to be its readability. It the knowledge even the anecdotal power of the writer. And Sean Cunningham is not alone in this series in disappointing me in that regard. This I've read probably six biographies of Henry VIIth. Granted, all of them were longer than this, but I've also read Henry VIIth chapters in many histories of the tutors. Heck, I wrote a chapter like that myself. And nothing really about this stood out is what I guess what I'm trying to say. It wasn't it wasn't a particularly interesting reading experience. It's a good introduction to the character, but so is Wikipedia, which is free and on your phone. Uh it it didn't wow me. It's it's a biography that did not wow me. Uh then we have um Okay. Uh do I have it? No, I don't. Uh there was a recent London Review of Books. I just recently resubscribed to the London Review of Books and there was recently I think it was the London Review of Books, maybe it was the TLS. Recently, there was an article in the TLS on a book that I realized when I read the article that I had the book sitting here and had not read it yet, even though it's now a month old, maybe even more than that. Uh the book is by Carolyn Sharples and it's called the long death of Adolf Hitler and it's about all of the twists and turns in Hitler's post suicide life or from from the very earliest moment with Soviet the famous photo of Soviet soldiers crowded around a dead body that that kind of sort of looks like Hitler and that was quickly debunked as being a Hitler body double and then rebunked as not being a Hitler body double. and then debunked again as being a Hitler body double. Uh plenty of proponents have said, conspiracy theory proponents have said that Hitler did not in fact die in the bunker. That in the last few days, weeks of his life, he had been using body doubles in public a lot. Not only because he was worried about being picked off by a sniper or the advanced wave of Soviet military or whatnot, but also because he was increasingly infirm.

[00:05:55]Couldn't keep his hand from trembling, couldn't keep his shoulder from trembling, couldn't keep his head from trembling. and was vain enough not to want people to see that even when he knew everything was over. Uh, and so he used lots and lots of body doubles.

[00:06:09]Proponents of the conspiracy theory proponents say that it was a body double that died in the bunker and that Hitler escaped that he escaped that a a pilot was standing by to whisk him out of Berlin uh on down a main street because all the runways had been destroyed and that he made his way all the way to Argentina.

[00:06:30]Uh, and there were inquiries. There have been inquiries. Bodies were found in the Chancellory in the Chancellory Garden.

[00:06:38]Badly charred bodies that still had their dental arrangements. And uh, to my opinion, the identity of the body that was Adolf Hitler was conclusively proven by the fact that Hitler's dental technician uh, was taken in for questioning and was told What what was Hitler's dental arrangement like? You you sat there over him with his mouth open and you know the tube draining from his mouth and whatnot. Can you on this on this outline of a an adult person's teeth? Can you describe his his particular dental arrangement? It turns out his dental arrangements were not only ornate but odd. They stood out. They weren't normal at all. And to my mind, a knockdown piece of evidence that the body in the in the chancery library was Hitler is that that technician drew the arrangements, the the bridges, the gaps, the cavities and whatnot of that of that lower jaw before she saw the jaw that was removed from the chancery garden. And they were identical.

[00:07:48]Uh I don't know. I don't know. We don't have fingerprints, but teeth don't generally lie. Um, all needless to say, all of the eyewitnesses say, "Well, no, we didn't we didn't cry and kill ourselves or think about killing ourselves because a body double died. We didn't do any of that because a body double died. We did it because we watched him shuffle into his room and close the door and a minute later we heard the shot." Uh, but it goes beyond that because there's a skull fragment.

[00:08:18]Famously, there's a skull fragment that sat in Soviet records. Famously, it was then identified as female. This further fueled conspiracy theorists that Hitler had not actually died, that some whoever died in the bunker, it wasn't him, etc., etc., etc. And this book traces all of that with tremendous energy, just tremendous energy. I don't know.

[00:08:40]Off the top of my head, I'm not 100% sure if there's anything actually original in this book. I ignore the claims of originality in the publicity material or even in the author's forward. I don't know if there's off the top of my head, I don't know if there's anything actually original in here. Uh I mean I I'd be willing to bet that there are even now after 80 years I'd be willing to bet there are details in Soviet records that have not been made public to the west even during the the warmest period of prochamp between you know Soviet Union or Russia and and the United States. Uh but even so uh it didn't matter cuz this was really really enjoyable. I I feel a little ashamed uh that I needed the London Review of Books to kick me into gear to get it off my pile. My work pile is ab an absolute mess. Uh and then from Adolf Hitler, we can move on to something genuinely nefarious. We can move on to Rod Phillips new book, which is a history of cats.

[00:09:39]Uh it's it's a history of tiny little pointy spiky homicidal maniacs all throughout history.

[00:09:48]Uh there's this would ordinarily be a history of domestication, but cats aren't all that domesticated. They can survive in the wild. Most of them can if you don't maim them, they can survive in the wild. And also, they don't particularly like doing any domestic tasks.

[00:10:04]You get a cat from mousing or for ratting, they'll do it, I suppose, unless they don't feel like it.

[00:10:13]And a cat is an actual no duties domestic animal. Good lord, they are sure they are perfectly happy to sleep 22 hours a day, but they're also wantingly destructive and completely condescending and dismissive of you as a sovereign being. And this is a history of that. This is very ve this is very very affectionate. This is uh it's nothing that hasn't again it's nothing that hasn't been written before hundreds of times. A history of cats has been written hundreds of times. You know, you'll get Egyptian pharaohs, you'll get uh the Middle Ages, you'll get a random mention in the in the writings of of the Quran, but or in the Hadith, but but not it's not tremendously any different than any of those that have come before it. But it's this season's book along those lines, and it's very good, very energetic, very happy. So, if you happen to know a cat person, well, this would be the book to get them this season. Needless to say, I was not the target audience. Then, then we have the new book by Corey Doctoro, who wrote what I believe is an era defining, a historical moment defining book called Inchitification.

[00:11:25]Uh, and his new book is the reverse centator's guide to life after AI, how to think about artificial intelligence before it's too late. Uh, and I don't know what to make of this book. I thought it was thin, derivative, largely brainless, which is something I don't associate with this author at all. Uh, utterly myopic to I mean, I realize this would have been written months ago, but utterly myopic to the true dimension of AI, to the true nature of both its promise and its threats. I just I don't know. I don't know anything about Cory Doctoro, but this so I don't I don't know is, you know, has he been technological his whole life? He's kind of a go-to talking head guru for technology now. But has he been technological his whole life? Is he old?

[00:12:08]Does he well remember life before the internet, before ubiquitous technology?

[00:12:13]I don't know. I don't know anything about him. But one thing I know for sure, this book read like it was written by a 70-year-old. And I mean that in the worst possible way, not in the best possible way. This was not only was it uh to me seemed toneless or tonedeaf, but also incurious, which is weird. It's just weird. Of all the things that you could feel about AI, you might feel alarmed. You might be justified in feeling alarm, but not to be curious about it. I I don't know. I thought it was a misfire. Uh it's kind of weird coming so soon after in shitification, which was firing on all cylinders. Prophetic even. Uh then we have uh a reread I've gone back to a few times lately to James Russell Lol. I don't really count this book. Not all the books that are in this Friday reads are books that I count towards my weekly total, if that makes any sense at all. I don't typically include rereads, especially rereads where I basically know the book by heart. And with when it comes to James Russell Lol, the author James Russell Lol, definitely a Steve guy. Uh that's true for a lot of his work. It's true for especially all of his literary essays that he did. He did a few books called among my of called among my books where he just does collected literary essays that he did for the fourth nightly review or the Saturday review or whatnot. They are brilliant. They are amazingly good and I've been going back to them over and over. But there was a rabbit hole that induced this. I went to back to among my books the second series in order to reread his great essay on Dante which is amazing. I find something I honestly find something new to in to intrigue me in every reading of that book of that essay. Uh but it was part of a rabbit hole because I came to that essay from John Tuk's book, his big book on Dante that I continue to go back to and pick and peck at. It's not the kind of book that you enjoyably read from front to back. It's certainly not the kind of Dante book that you can hand to someone who wants to read a book on Dante. you you no it's it's for people who already know Dante and and know him fairly well. It's brilliant. It's a brilliant book. Uh but I went to that uh to pick and peck at various chapters uh before I went to this because I watched a screener of an upcoming show called In the Hand of Dante which is adapted from a Nick Toshis novel that Toshis is to me is resolutely forthright. I he has no literary talent at all. He has some imaginative imaginative talent and I can't imagine that that that we have an adaptation a new adaptation of a Nick Tashes book when we haven't had an adaptation of The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton in what 25 years anyway. Uh it's the story of uh of a passionate Dante scholar who learns that there is an original manuscript of the comedia and what will he do about that and what kind of uh you know memories will it will instill in him and I watched that screener a gigantic cast of A-list people having a blast. I don't it isn't a fun movie at all. It's a dark serious tense movie. fairly well done, but I don't know. I don't I would love to know what what life was like on the set. I would love to know that. Uh because it it it none of the characters are laughing or joking, but it looks like they're having so much fun in this weird Dantefueled thriller. And that got me thinking about the Tuk book. A couple of aspects of that show got me interested in the Tuk book. So I went back to Dante by Tuk and read a couple of those chapters just dipping in and out. And then I wanted to go back to reread James Russell Lol's essay on Dante and uh I'm not sure that that rabbit hole is over. I'm really not sure. It could be that I will go back to a couple of other books that I have on Dante or maybe it's time for a Divide comedy reread.

[00:16:22]I haven't done that from front to back in a few years and really I should do it every year. Uh but anyway, that wasn't the only rabbit hole that I did for this Friday reads. But before we get to the other rabbit hole, uh there was also this, which I don't know why I reread this. This came out in the 1980s, 1977. I I think it was just as random as that. The bookcase was on my way from one room to another and I happened to glance at it. I think it might just be that. I had no great urging to read Roberty Howard Pastiche. I had no great urging to read about, you know, prehistoric Ireland.

[00:17:00]Uh, but I ended up doing it. I ended up doing a reread probably for the first time since 77 of Andrew Offett's book, The Myths of Doom. He did Andrew Offett for some odd reason did a series of Conan of Roberty Howard Prestige novels about Roberty Howard's character, Cormack McCart.

[00:17:17]Uh, and I I read them all when they came out. There was one of them called Sword of the Gale that I really liked.

[00:17:24]the others. I thought meta meta. Uh, and I I believe this is the first time that I've read this since then. Didn't even know I had a paperback of it. And I loved it. I loved it. I think I loved it a lot more than I did the first time.

[00:17:36]And I can't help but wonder if maybe that's because I'm a whole lot I know a whole lot more about Kucallin and the Fiana and the Red Branch Cycle and all that than I did when I would have read this the first time, which keep in mind if I read it in 1977, that meant I read it decades before I was born. Now, how good can your comprehension be if you're reading something decades before you're born? Uh, considering that I am a raven-haired, beasting lipped 28-year-old, as you newcomers perhaps need reminding. Uh, but I I thought this was great. Now I need to dig out the other. I I'm actually wondering if it's Cormarmac McCart or if it's Andrew Offett. Maybe I just need to read all of Andrew Offett because he boy oh boy, he does not let up when he's writing. I mean, this this thing was a little too a little too heavy with the cod Irish accents. the the all all the odd the the stereotypical ways that you write an Irish person speaking if you want to do that without really thinking about it.

[00:18:36]It was a little too heavy on that. But uh you know I can take quite a few faith and pagoras if I'm going to get a book this this thrilling. Uh so I need to I need to figure that out and maybe find some more of those. Uh so okay so that was not a rabbit hole but then the other rabbit hole because it was that uh it was that London Review of Books. Was it the London Review of Books? Actually going to check. Yes, it was London Review of Books. There was a review in the London Review of Books by Nicholas Higum about about the first king of England by David Woodman.

[00:19:10]He did a review of of that book.

[00:19:14]Uh and I read that book. I liked it. I reviewed it. Uh, and at one point in Higum's review, he mentions someone else. Where was he mentions bead, of course. Uh, but I don't need any I don't need help with bead. Bead is an old old friend. I don't need any help with him, but he mentions uh somewhere in this review.

[00:19:41]Yeah, he's talking about Ow.

[00:19:44]Uh, yeah, there we go. There we go. He's talking about uh the rule of Wessix and and Ethelald and he says the historian Frank Stanton writing in 1943 suppose that the Mercian kings made quote a great advance toward the univer the unity of England though scholarly opinion has since rode back seeing was more interested in personal power than state building and he mentioned Stenton a couple of other times in this review.

[00:20:11]Now, when I read this review, he he uh Higum calls it calls Woodman's book a monograph, and he largely has positive things to say about it. So, in that sense, I was relieved. Right? I've mentioned before on this channel that when you're a reviewer and you you come across a review of a book by someone else that you also reviewed, I get butterflies in the stomach. Maybe that doesn't happen to every reviewer, but I get a little bit a little bit of butterflies in the stomach thinking, "Oh my god, are you going to hate it when I liked it, and you're going to have reason to hate it? Are you going to know something about it that I didn't know that really is dispositive? Uh, are you gonna love it when I didn't love it and convince me in your review, which is the whole point of a review, right? Is either to e it's it's to give you enough information to convince you one way or another to read the book. Uh, it this didn't do any of that. Hig and I have the same high opinion of Woodman's book.

[00:21:02]The first king of England is quite good really in a way foundational certainly when since it is it is uh packaged for a popular audience. So it's that's great. I mean you've got uh Tom Holland and Dan Jones giving blurbs on the cover. You can't do can't get more popular than that. So this review didn't do that for me. It didn't it didn't make me rethink my own review. If I can remember I'll leave my review linked down below. But it did send me back to this book, which is not long. So, I reread this book. And as usual, I started in the back. I started with the vast notes in the back. Uh, and reread it. I usually don't do that. I usually I mean, I gave this thing a shot. I read the the uh eGalley when the publisher first sent it to me. Then I read the advanced copy that I think we saw on this channel. And then I read the finished copy. That's three times through this. That's more than anybody else is going to read this. But when I read that review, I went back to this book and read it. And yet, that was not satisfying to me for my rabbit hole.

[00:22:05]Instead, when I was done with that, I went to Frank Stanton's book on Anglo-Saxon England, which is not short and which I had not read. I got this thing. I found a copy of this uh I don't even know. Uh I don't know when I found this or maybe somebody sent this to me. Well, anyway, I uh I thought that I would just read Ethald and a couple of his brothers and father and whatnot. Instead, I ended up reading almost the whole of this thing. It's not meant to be read front to back. I don't think it was meant to be read that way.

[00:22:39]But it's so good. Such steep, icy scholarship. Totally different than what any historian could write today, even if they wanted to. that just totally I don't want to say totally better but totally more serious more adult just so so I went to this as a part of a rabbit hole first I went to the review then I saw Stanton's name in the review then I went to the book under review and reread that then I went to Stanton and reread him but that even that wasn't enough so I went to the old pelican history of England this is Dorothy Whitlock this is her book on the beginnings of English society and And this is all about the Anglo-Saxons.

[00:23:20]Uh, a lot of the figure and most of the figures in Stanton don't appear in here because this is a tiny little thing that is meant to be an overview much like the Penguin Monarch series that we started with however long ago this video was. I I went back to this. I've read these things. Penguin and and uh Pelican did a whole series of, you know, of little paperbacks on the history of England and I've read them all so many times. Uh, I went back and I reread this and uh, you know, it was intriguing to see not only where Stanton disagrees with some of the implications here, but also where Woodman does. I loved it though.

[00:23:55]Absolutely loved it. Totally got the the taste of Anglo-Saxon England. Uh, and because I had the taste of Anglo-Saxon England, I finished my rabbit hole for now. Uh, because there's one other the the that big Oxford trade paperback of Anglo-Saxon England. I don't remember who wrote that off the top of my head, but I have it here somewhere. And I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about going to that. But I went to a great anthology. Who did this anthology?

[00:24:22]Uh Kevin Crossley Holland. This is a great anthology. I don't know that it's made anymore. It's the Oxford Royal Classics and it's the Anglo-Saxon World.

[00:24:31]An anthology of four different works of literature from the Anglo-Saxon world.

[00:24:36]There's a general introduction that's huge and great. Each of the works has an introduction of its own and then there are huge endnotes. This has a lot. This has uh what uh deor battle of Maldin uh uh canes letter to the people of England whole section on the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Not the whole of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle but I have that too somewhere here an annotated Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Uh you have the wanderer, the seafarer, the ruin. Uh, and I believe this has also all of Beaowolf. Yes. Yeah. This has all of Beowolf in it and a whole bunch of other stuff too in here that just just ranges all over the Anglo-Saxon world. All the different aspects of it. Heroic tradition, infiltration of Christianity, prayers, all that stuff. All with just vast amounts of completely original supporting material. This is not a reprint from a hard cover. This was just made to be this way. So I went to this and read it thoroughly. just beetling along on the notes and the the inconula and I don't think I don't think I'm satisfied.

[00:25:45]I don't think I am. I think I've really got an Anglo-Saxon bug. So, this is a Friday reads, but of course my reading just barrels along. So, I don't have, you know, I don't have to look forward to, you know, a weekend when I can do a lot of reading or anything like that.

[00:25:57]It's all I do. Uh although I am hosting a guest, so that will interrupt my reading time. Uh I hosting a couple of guests in the next two weeks. Uh but I don't think I'm done with Anglo-Saxon England. I think I want to I want to do a lot more not only history but also fiction.

[00:26:15]And that's where uh the old Kindle will come in with the old ebooks because I have a lot of historical fiction set in Anglo-Saxon times. And some of it's bound to be good. I know some of it is, but some of it that I don't know about is bound to be good. Uh so there you go.

[00:26:32]I don't really know what this is. I never know what my Friday reads are.

[00:26:35]They're always a mess. They're always all over the place. But that's basically what it is. A couple of rabbit holes, a couple of other books. And I want to know about you. Oh, I should also mention uh one other point. Don't hold your sword that way. You will cut your fingers off.

[00:26:49]No matter how cool it looks, don't do it. Uh but anyway, uh anyway, I'd love to know uh how your own week reading week is going, what your own Friday reads is looking like. If you have a book channel, I hope you make a video about it. If you don't have a book channel, I hope you'll start a book channel and make a video about your reading, the subject on which you are the world's foremost expert. Uh, but anyway, I'm I've got to wrap this up. So many other videos that I want to make today. I don't think I'm going to be able to make any of them. Uh, but uh, maybe. So, I will see you soon. Thank you both.