Floods, moves, and weddings, best describe my 2024. I got engaged in November 2023. My wife and I got married on July 6th, 2024. Between engagement and wedding, we worked to find a venue, got dance lessons, selected a venue, interviewed wedding photographers, chose a photographer, selected wedding vendors, and then wrangled through the politics of wedding invites. As that was going on, we were looking to buy a house. We were both exhausted with the consequences of Progressive Liberal politics in Denver engendering a noticeably lower quality of living, and for our hopeful future kids we wanted better lottery admittance chances at a Barney Initiative School (nine exist in Colorado, but the waitlist is over 2,000 kids), all that made us look out of state for a move. We considered Florida but decided on Boise, Idaho. We both knew little about Boise. Which meant house hunting in an unknown city and trying to get a feel for that city, which required a few trips. During the house hunting and wedding planning, my wife’s lease came up on her apartment. She moved into my place and within two weeks a faulty HVAC exploded and flooded my unit. That required an emergency move and a move into a unit we both hated. Soon after, I bought a house in Boise, in a blink of an eye, it was time to get married, which meant going to Omaha for a while. We got married on July 6th, drove back to Denver two days later, packed up, and then drove to Boise, Idaho on July 12th. Since we each didn’t have much furniture, we had to buy almost everything to fill our house. From July until November delivery trucks were showing up with furniture. I’m a creature of routine and 2024 upheaved my ingrained routine. But it changed the routine in a good way, marriage is a superpower when you vet for the right woman. I expected to settle into my routine in Boise, but after fourteen years in Denver, and knowing Denver inside and out, the shock of a new city took up bandwidth and still does. And leaving an established social circle, and easier travel access to family (flying east from Boise is excruciating) adds to the bandwidth.
Naturally, these major changes plus the random disaster, slowed down the number of books I read. For the first time in a long time, I went stretches of days without reading. And a number of days where I had so much going on that when I did read, I didn’t retain anything. I reread a lot of pages, slowing the reading pace down to a crawl for many books.
2024 marked big changes to my site. My site underwent an entire redesign and overhaul in late 2023. My changes move glacially. And with the site changing it grinded my writing pace down to glacial melt. But even with the glacial shifts, I got excited for my first Deep Read Series on my shiny new site. I picked the topic American Decline, curated thirteen books, and hoped a few Good Word Members would join in some capacity. One person joined in and read Satyricon but on the whole — crickets. Some discussion occurred in the new forum, but in reality, I got over my skis. The American Decline topic showed me that my transition into reading and away from copy was and still is taking time. For instance, when I announced reading the infamous Bell Curve, and invited any member interested to read along, a few copywriters expressed excitement. They were excited to “Read a book that will help hack the human mind.” Bell Curve is anything but a book to hack the human mind, and my site and writing doesn’t veer near “hacking the human mind.” The copywriters made a lot of noise promising to read it, and a few read the introduction, some expressed concern that it wasn’t a mind hack book and it wasn’t as easy to read as they expected, and of course, once effort shock kicked in, the standard short film of the Internet Marketer/Copywriter who makes a lot of noise with their promises played out.
Scene 1: Copywriter says the book is an opportunity to learn something new, to face a challenge and grow, they’re brimming with excitement to tackle this tough task, and that the effort will be worth the reward.
Scene 2: Each copywriter vanishes, each ending their subscription, most unsubscribe from all email lists, and all are never to be heard from again.
Albeit, the glacial pace, big changes, shift in direction, all that plus dropping a list of thirteen books on the heady topic of American Decline, was a big reach. I held zero expectations of people reading exactly to my schedule; I held zero expectations they would read all thirteen books. I did expect, however, that a handful would join in on at least a book or two. One person bravely joined in and read a book, and I’m grateful they did. Good Word Members also had to deal with my writing experiments in 2024. Those probably came across as manic. So all in all, I started 2024 expecting serious readers, discussions on American Decline, but a number of factors led to an exodus of members.
Call it a growing pain or a change in direction pain, it all made me realize I need to approach my site differently. I knew I needed to capture a more serious reader. I have a handful, but a handful isn’t a business.
Fortunately, a videographer has been bugging me for a few years. He’s worked with two personalities I massively respect, Mike Cernovich and Alexander Cortes. He kept saying I’d be great on video. In late fall of 2024, I flew him out here to Boise and we started a new project. A YouTube page will be up and going in 2025, along with a new free newsletter, and some more features for paid members. YouTube will test me since I’m fairly camera shy. And I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to technology. But I’m hoping YouTube will resonate with an audience aligning with my change in direction.
To finish this section, I created a reading list page in 2024. It got too big and too clunky, but the experiment was worthwhile. I’m going to keep the reading list page but will make changes for 2025 to have it better organized.
With that, here are the books read in 2024, along with my rating for each:
- Alienated America, Timothy P. Carney 5/6
- Coming Apart, Charles Murray 5/6
- Bell Curve, Charles Murray 6/6
- The Two-Parent Privilege, Melissa S. Kearney 4/6
- Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington 6/6
- The Satyricon, Petronius 6/6
- Shame, Shelby Steele 5/6
- Great Society, Amity Shlaes 5/6
- Bad Therapy, Abigail Shrier 4/6
- Swamp Story, Dave Barry 4/6
- Fletch, Gregory McDonald 2/6
- The Last Action Heroes, Nick DeSemlyn 2/6
- The End of Everything, Victor Davis Hanson 6/6
- The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, Douglas Brunt 5/6
- The Long Embrace, Judith Freeman 4/6
- The Three Languages of Politics, Arnold Kling 2/6
- A History of the Bible, John Barton 5/6
- Shepherds for Sale, Megan Basham 4/6
- On Guard, William Lane Craig 5/6
- Playback, Raymond Chandler 3/6
- The Case for Trump, Victor Davis Hanson 6/6
- Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance 6/6
- Who Killed Homer, Victor Davis Hanson & John Heath 5/6
- Homer and His Iliad, Robin Lane Fox 4/6
The Top Non-Fiction of 2024
Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington
Harrington’s style is beautifully manic. She writes with a deep sense of urgency and purpose. Yet that manic style packs a message critically important for today’s culture. Harrington does more than paint the egregious harms of feminism, she exposes deep cultural issues and the forces behind those issues.
Harrington out-liberaled the liberals. She doubled down on living feminist lifestyles, and while she felt unsatisfied, she kept adhering to the Progressive Feminist advice to keep going, believing in its message. When she had her child, it was her Road to Damascus moment. And from here, she looked into Feminism and her beliefs.
Harrington covers a ton with her manic style. She does a tremendous job detailing the various forces and influences that caused women to radically alter their bodies in the modern era. You may remember the era from around 1999 – 2008, give or take, where it became fashionable for women to look like skinny boys or as shapely as an ironing board. And with the advent of surgery — which she reveals the ideological influences — to alter your body to fit that norm: breast reductions, thigh gap surgery, butt reduction surgery, and so on. Women wanted to be boyishly skinny, to remove or reduce a body part, to no longer “get sexualized by the male gaze”, to no longer face sophomoric remarks about a body part, to no longer deal with genuine compliments about their figure or a physical feature, (since this meant their physical features were part of their identity at a time when those physical features were seen as backward, lower class, unfashionable, or constructed by the patriarchy), or, most likely, to no longer be left out of the new fad. Regardless of the wish, all current physical identities could be escaped with surgery to obtain the promised new and better identity.
That period was the era of my Borneo days. I remember overhearing girls at the bars considering a thigh gap surgery or bragging about having one. I remember going on a date with a slender girl who wanted a butt reduction surgery. These girls seemed to want more of the fashionable look at that time versus wishing to fight the patriarchy, yet the desire to physically alter their identity into something wholly different shocked me. Harrington details the ideologies that influenced women to undergo these procedures, and how those ideologies were part of a slippery slope leading us to today: popularized radical gender identity transformations, which are, in reality, just like the era to look like an ironing board, surgical body mutilation to fit in with social fashions. The ideologies behind this? A mixture of but not limited to, Feminism, Transhumanism, Marxism, and Postmodern Relativism (breast augmentation is debated in feminist circles, unsurprisingly, since 4th wave feminist positions often contradict each other, but many circles consider augmentation a negative because it falls under female beauty ideals “constructed by the patriarchy”).
Harrington talks of the consequences of birth control concomitant with cavalier Sexual Revolution attitudes and how the combination helped influence men and women to the fringes of sexuality, helped influence people to the bizarre edges of cynical body part objectification. For instance, the idea that women need to have “sex like a man” and sleep with as many partners as possible to obtain personal empowerment. Or how polyamorous lifestyles are seen as an enlightened pathway to a cultured, urbane, and elite lifestyle (a Marxist concept, he called it Community of Women, aka, wife-swapping; and Marx wanted to abolish families since he claimed it’s a bourgeois concept designed to keep women subjugated). Or that more and more kinks are required to obtain not only satisfaction but also spiritual enlightenment. The current various fetishes, once taken as a sign of psychological issues are now somehow a form of political and social activism. That the way to fight Trump, climate change, and stand up against the genocide of women in red states, is to have an orgy dressed as a furry. Doing these kinks or “alternative lifestyles” somehow bestows moral superiority and political superiority. And of course, it’s anti-Christian.
The argument that struck me the most, and upon reflection, I agree with more and more each day, is Harrington’s concept of Rewilding Sex. Simply put, remove all forms of birth control. No condoms. No IUDs. No birth control pill. No morning-after pill. No abortion except in the case of rape, incest, or risk of death for the mother. And by removing all of this, Harrington claims, puts the onus on men and women to get serious about who they choose to have sex with, to understand the gravity of sex, and to relish in that gravity. Harrington believes rewilding sex will force women — and men —to grasp fertility tracking, or in other words, a woman’s cycles. To clarify, she isn’t saying that you should abstain from sex until you’re married, nor does she knock that belief of abstinence until marriage and she respects the Christian mores of abstinence, but what she calls for most is injecting gravity and meaning back into sex. That this gravity, when vetting for partners, radically eliminates the sexual unseriousness of our current era.
All in all, Harrington gives a poignant and incisive analysis of our modern culture. Well worth the read, and she’s well worth checking out on various interviews.
Honorable Mention Non-Fiction
The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, Victor Davis Hanson
This was close to overtaking Harrington. I wrangled with it. I read three Hanson books in 2024, and I read one close to the end of 2023. Hanson, in this book, tells us so much about human nature, the past, and today, and delivers needed wisdom. The End of Everything was a blast. It involved why certain civilizations vanished, wars, military strategy, cultural hubris, the danger of intellectuals, and each page offers insights for our modern day. A superb read.
Presidential Election
The Case for Donald Trump by Victor Davis Hanson and Hillbilly Elegy by Vice President, J.D. Vance tells us the why and how of the American currents that led to the greatest political comeback in American history, the comeback of Donald Trump. If you want to know why, how, and what paved this win — and Trump’s win in 2016 — both are a must-read. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you sit on. Read them together and a lot will become clear.
Best Fiction
Satyricon, Petronius
It was written during the reign of Nero, around 63 A.D. It gives us a look at Roman culture when the Roman Empire was still at the zenith of its power, well before a noticeable decline kicked in (a little after Marcus Aurelius).
Petronius was an advisor to Nero. He was Nero’s cultural expert. Despite being loved by Nero, Nero executed Petronius after he read the Satyricon. It’s satire, and it’s graphic. Wildly graphic. But Petronius wrote the tale to warn of the morals of excess. You can see much of modern culture and our faddish cultural ideologies play out. For instance, how polyamory or hedonistic practices, while deemed by Progressives and secularists as a pathway to moral enlightenment, political and social preeminence, intellectual sophistication, and a form of healing, in reality, prove unsatisfying, foment cultural enervation, chain a person to self-humiliation rituals, and inject spiritual ambiguity into a person’s soul.
Characters are always eating, always chasing some sexual thrill, and material obsession permeates the story. The parties are garish, and feature characters freely flatulating, and freely fornicating. The most famous scene, Trimalchio’s Feast has become a constant in literature, stories, and Hollywood. The iconic Sopranos series is a constant play on Trimalchio’s Feast: the constant eating, the parties at The Bada Bing, and how it’s all never quite satisfying, despite each sensuality’s promise of gratification. The excess, and the cynical indulgence comprising and leading up to the excess, make gratification more and more elusive.
The story is graphic, hilarious, and relevant. A recent New Yorker article on Polyamory and their claim as to why it’s hip and cultured — Satyricon shows instead how the concept is not new, and why the hailed idea is in fact a detriment to culture and to a person’s spirit. This work is a classic for a reason. While many parts of it are missing, Christian monks still decided to save it for its importance (parts of it were destroyed, the beginning and the end, the work was cared for cavalierly due to its graphic nature, yet it was still decided to be saved). Which says something. A work this graphic, saved and restored by some of the most rigid Christian sects, speaks to its importance.
Biggest Letdown
Fletch, Gregory McDonald
I love the movie Fletch. It is a classic. I rank it as a top comedy movie. Like most movies derived from books, I expected the book to be better. The book was awful. The screenwriters of Fletch saw crumbs of potential, took those crumbs to sonic heights, and turned Fletch the movie into a comedic masterpiece. The book version of Fletch is overtly cynical and nihilistic. It had unnecessary storylines, like Fletch sleeping with an underage prostitute in a groomer manner. This creepy storyline did nothing to move the character or story forward. I kept expecting it to get better, but it didn’t. The dialogue stunk, the atmosphere stunk, and the nihilism made for a choking stink.
Trashed Book
The Wager, David Grann
The Wager came with big expectations. It’s a bestseller, has killer reviews, and thousands love it on Amazon. I barely made twenty pages before chucking it in the trash. Grann kept taking stock potshots at capitalism, the West, Conservatives, imperialism, and I’m sure if I made it further, Donald Trump. The potshots overly slanted his position to the point that it drained all trust from his narrative. Grann proceeded from Postmodern Liberal Revisionism while outright rejecting proceeding from evidence. The other aspect that irked me was the atrocious cliches. Grann tried a stereotypical sailor vernacular from the 1800s. Lines like “a cracking good ship” came across as cartoonish and schizophrenic. And how those lines tangled with the partisan potshots made for some of the worst style I’ve ever seen on the page.
American Decline Series Recap
I got over my skis with it. But I enjoyed each book. I never got around to an article because I never answered the question, “Is America in decline?” satisfyingly. I will venture my belief that America is declining culturally in specific areas. We’re not nearly as degenerate as people online proclaim, but we’re increasingly vicarious, cynical, insecure, and unserious. It could also be a product of America dealing with the consequences of overwhelming affluence and leisure. But I’m convinced America is still exceptional, and still great, and am still wildly optimistic for its future.
My move from Denver to Boise also opened my eyes. Boise is a model of good governance. Denver, I still love it, and it still offers many great features, is in decline. And Denver Democrat constituents — the overwhelming majority — embrace this decline, treating it as an effect of “a growing city” despite Denver having one of the highest emigration rates in the country. Denver still has better amenities than Boise, and many wonderful qualities, but the Progressive levels of pride with growing crime, illegal aliens, higher costs of living, a noticeable decline in the standard of living, and their disgust of any red part of Colorado is deeply troubling. You would think the residents would tire of the noticeable hits on their living standards, but instead, they wave it as a badge of honor. That I don’t know what to make of.
Reading this series and then moving to a city without the issues of Progressive policy hurled me further in thought. Against the backdrop of the books I read and the move to Boise, at some point, I may write a few articles on it.
Upcoming for 2025
The big thing coming, is the video element of my site. The YouTube page will be a challenge for me. I’m betting a lot on it. We’ll see what what unfolds.
I’m tinkering with my daily schedule to get more reading in, and I hope that tinkering generates more articles.
I’m still doing the Deep Read series, as I enjoy them too much.
My site really isn’t political. But each year I feel more and more a calling to be a place where people on my political spectrum, Conservative/right-leaning, can come and engage in the culture of good reading. While Barnes and Noble is improving, many books and bookstores slam and shun conservatives. Also, with cynical areas like BookTok or “I read it so you didn’t have to”, it’s tough finding a place of good books and engaging with them. I hope to be that area, an area for deeper engagement, an area Conservatives can enjoy. I don’t know why I’m sharing this other than I feel called to.
Here are some upcoming Deep Read Series of 2025 (some will change and some might be in 2026):
- Western Civilization
- Christianity – in particular Augustine
- America (Tocqueville)
- Dostoyevski
- Russell Kirk
And wherever else I turn.
To finish, my purpose is still to inspire better reading. We’re becoming a society that likes to analyze Cliffs Notes, and now a society analyzing the analyzer of Cliffs Notes, ChatGPT (and other AI platforms) versus a society that engages with the whole, that engages with lineage or themes. I hope to inspire deeper reading, reading for entertainment, and making good reading a fun habit in 2025.