Meanwhile, I'm still happily sailing through Der Herr des Ringes and I notice that reading Hobbit dialogue in German loses some of the flavor of the original. Whereas I noticed, and felt, things in the high-falutin' dialogue between, say Gandalf and Denethor, and in all the uplifted prose surrounding the final battle and the victory, and in all the battle vocabulary, when it comes down to English peasants -- which is what the Hobbits are, or at least, how they speak -- things fall kind of flat. The Gaffer is somebody I feel like I've always known, but der Ohm just doesn't sound right. All in all, there are subtle things communicated in English -- especially in stylistically rich books like Huckleberry Finn and LOTR -- that are hard to put into other languages.
As regards my non-fiction reading that I have to report to Charge Conference for Continuing Edgumacation purposes, here's what I've read in the last year.
Eagles and Empire: the United States, Mexico, and the struggle for a continent, by David A. Clary
Pastoring Men, by Patrick Morley
The West Point Atlas of War: The Civil War, ed. Brig. Gen. Vincent J. Esposito
Mistress of the Monarchy: the life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster, by Alison Weir
Witness, by Whittaker Chambers
God and Man at Yale, by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary, by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, & Edmund Weiner
John Wesley’s Ecclesiology: a study in its sources and development, by Gwang Seok Oh
Elizabeth’s Spymaster, by Robert Hutchinson
Warlord: a life of Winston Churchill at war, 1874-1945, by Carlo d’Este
Courage and Consequence, by Karl Rove
Germania: in wayward pursuit of the Germans and their history, by Simon Winder
The Zeal of Thy House, by Dorothy Sayers
Baden-Powell: the two lives of a hero, by William Hillcourt with Olave, Lady Baden-Powell
Green Bar Bill: the story of William Hillcourt, by Nelson R. Block
Apologia, by Bishop William R. Cannon
Aldersgate and Athens: John Wesley and the foundations of Christian belief, by William J. Abraham
Henry Clay: the essential American, by David S. Heidler & Jeanne T. Heidler
The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the darkest hour of the Roman republic, by Robert L. O’Connell