2025 Reading List

 Somewhat inspired by FOTB (Friends Of This Blog) Leigh and Bob, I thought it would be amusing to list the books that I read in 2025.  If nothing else, it may help to illuminate the madness that is my mind.

Books are listed in order read throughout the year:

1)  Rome's Enemies: The Desert Frontier - David Nicolle

2)  Ultra Running for Normal People - Sid Garza-Hillman

3)  Praying the Word - Enzo Bianchi

4)  A Brief History of Vietnam - Bill Hayton

5)  The Unfettered Mind - Takuan Soho

6)  A Beginner's Guide to Japanese Haiku - William Scott Wilson

7) The Forlorn Hope - David Drake

8)  Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker

9)  Get Your Life Back - John Eldredge

10)  Samurai Wisdom - Thomas Cleary

11) The Peloponnesian War - Donald Kagan

12) Eaters of the Dead - Michael Crichton

13) Poitiers A.D. 732 - David Nicholle

14) Mistras - Myrtali Acheimastou-Potamianou

15) Iai:  The Art of Drawing the Sword - Darrell Max Craig

16) The Varangian Guard: 988-1453 - Raffaele D'Amato

17) Ultralearning- Scott Young

18) Rome's Enemies:  Germanics and Dacians - Peter Wilcox

19) Granada 1492 - David Nicolle

20) Letters #1 - Basil the Great

21) Tusculum Disputations Cicero

22) Epitome of Roman History - Florus

23) The End of the World is just The Beginning - Peter Zeihan

24) The End of E-mail - Cal Newport

25) Deep Work - Cal Newport

26) Rome's Enemies:  Spanish Armies - David Nicolle

27) Living in Wonder - Rod Dreher

28) Nukazuke - Nami Yamada

29) Byzantine Imperial Guardsman 925-1025 - Raffaele D'Amato

30) The Age of Charlemagne - David Nicolle

31) Byzantine Cavalryman c. 900-1204- Timothy Dawson

32) Constantinople 1453 - David Nicolle

33) The Full Moon Coffee Shop - Mai Mochizuki

34) Soldiers of the Dragon - C J Peers

35) Anglo Saxon Kings and Warlords A.D. 400-1070 - Raffaele D'Amato

36) Armies of the Muslim Conquest - David Nicolle

37) Byzantine Naval Forces 1261-1461 - Raffaele D'Amato

38) Campaldino 1289 - Kelly Devries

39) Sparta's Third Attic War - Paul Rahe

40) Armies of the Caliphate 862-1098 - David Nicolle

41) The Sultan of Byzantium - Selçuk Alcun

42) Wurmbrand:  Tortured for Christ - Voice of the Martyrs

43) Hogen Monogatari - William R. Wilson

44) Troy c. 1700-1250 B.C. - Nic Fields

45) Manzikert 1071 - David Nicolle

46) The Intellectual Life - A.G. Sertillanges

47) Constantinople A.D. 717-18 - Si Sheppard

48) How to become CEO - Jeffrey Fox

49) The Varangian Guard: 988-1453 - Raffaele D'Amato (Repeat)

50) Knave of Dreams - Andre Norton

51) Uller Uprising - H. Beam Piper

52) Falkenberg's Legion - Jerry Pournelle

53) Teutoberger Wald A.D. 9 - Michael McNally

54) Heavenly Participation - Hans Boersma

55) The Hundred Rules of War - Tsukahara Bokuden

56) The Trivium - Sister Mirriam Joseph

57) Sassanian Elite Cavalry A.D. 224-642 - Kaveh Farrokh

58) Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude - Jeffrey Gitomer

59) Strategy - B.H. Liddell Hart

60) A Beginner's Guide to Prayer - Michael Keiser

61) The Rule of Saint Benedict

62) A Pilgrim's Guide to 46 Temples - Shiro Usui

63) The Way of Simplicity - Esther de Waal

64) The World Beyond Your Head - Matthew B. Crawford

65) Little Bighorn 1876 - Peter Panzeri

66) Conan - Robert E. Howard

67) Conan of Cimmeria - Robert E. Howard

68) Conan the Freebooter - Robert E. Howard

69) Conan the Wanderer - Robert E. Howard

70) Conan the Adventurer - Robert E. Howard

71) Edge of Eternity - Randy Alcorn

72) The Sword of No Sword - John Stevens

73) Cultivating Ch'i- Kaibara Ekiken

74) The Shallows  - Nicholas Carr

75) If You Love The Lord - Keith Green

76) Superbloom - Nicholas Carr

77) Vikings:  Lord of the Seas

78) The Onin War - H. Paul Varley

79) Conan the Buccaneer - Robert E. Howard

80) Conan the Warrior - Robert E. Howard

81) Conan the Usurper - Robert E. Howard

82) Rachel's Folly - Patrice Lewis

83) Conan the Conqueror - Robert E. Howard

84) Conan the Avenger - Robert E. Howard

85) Conan of Aquilonia - Robert E. Howard

86) Conan of the Isles - Robert E. Howard

87) Shopcraft as Soulcraft - Matthew B. Crawford

88) The Call - Os Guinness

89) Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton

90) Epictetus Vol. I

91) The Last Days of Socrates - Plato

92) Early Samurai 200-1500 A.D. - Anthony J. Bryant

93) Letters to Freya - Helmuth von Moltke

94) The Coaching Habit - Michael Bungay Stanier

95) Praying Hyde - Basil Miller

96) Hitler's Cross - Erwin Lutzer

97) Tecumseh:  A Life - John Sugden

98) Prayers and Community:  The Benedictine Tradition - Columba Stewart

99) Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Michael Van Dyke

100) The Rubiyat - Omar Khayyam

101) Knights Templar 1120 - 1312 - Helen Nicholson

102) Thermopylae 480 B.C. - Nic Fields

103) Catalunian Fields 451 - Simon McDowell

104) The Mongols - Steven R. Turnbull

105) Attila and the Huns - David Nicolle

106) St. Thomas Aquinas/St. Francis of Assisi - G.K. Chesterton

107) Epictetus Vol. II

108) The Forlorn Hope - David Drake (Repeat)

109) Dark Piper - Andre Norton

110) The Wizard and The Warlord - Elizabeth Boyer

111) The Sword and The Satchel - Elizabeth Boyer

112) Waiting for God - Simone Weil

113) The Punic Wars 264-146 B.C. - Roger Bagnall

114) The Advice Trap - Michael Bungay Stanier

115) Harpax Legomena  Vol. 1 Spring 2025

116) Bruce Lee:  The Art of Expressing The Human Body - John Lee

117) Tractes/Consolation of Philosophy- Boethius

118) Juran on Leadership for Quality - J.M. Juran

119) The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

120) Hagakure - Yamamoto Tsunetomo

121) The Harper's Handbook - Laurie Riley

122) Ecclesiastical History of The English People I - Bede

123) The Gallic War - Caesar

124) Christ In the Carols- Christopher and Melodie Lane

125) The Bible

A Year Of Kindness (I): Prologue

 

To be completely frank, after completing A Year Of Humility, I was not sure that I was going to do another such series.  Not that it was not valuable (I need it more than most) but from a couple of other items, the biggest one simply being that I do not know that I got every post on Humility right.  

That might seem like a small thing - after all, this is a very small corner of the InterWeb - but there is enough bad teaching out there that one would not like to contribute further to it.  Added to that was the fact that - honestly - not every week of writing on Humility was straightforward.  Some weeks the posts almost wrote themselves.  On others, I struggled with coming up on a new aspect of humility (a problem of me, not issue itself:  entire works have been written on humility).

And so I had almost talked myself out of a new series - until I read Samuel Hancock's comment on the last day of the series:  "So, which virtue will you tackle for exposition next?  Perhaps not for an entire year, but I would appreciate your thoughts on those that remain and are of importance in your own life."

Without missing a beat, the word that came into my mind was "Kindness".

---

Arguably, this is simple an extension of realizing (especially over the past year, it seems) that I have found an increasing split between what people believe and how people act.  The split was probably always there and I missed it, but suddenly it seemed to become very real to me.

Looking at it from the perspective of the Christian,  we are by default arguing for a belief and a relationship that (to the unbelieving or agnostic eye) is almost completely based on 1) What we say based on Scripture; and 2) What we do (Yes, there are mystical interventions of God.  That said, it is not something we can or should necessarily count on for basic presentation to the world).  Whenever there is a dissonance between the two, others question - rightly - if we really have anything different to offer from every other belief and The World, where these sorts of things are common enough. Or in some cases, other beliefs and The World do a better job than we do of merging the two.

When I think of many Christians that I either read or follow, the first word that does not leap into my head is kindness.  Which is a shame, really.  Christians too often like to point to Jesus' confrontation of with bold actions (Which he did, although to be completely accurate most of those confrontations were against the established religious order, not against sinners).  

It is seldom they refer to His kindness, or to that of His Father.

---

Kindness remains the legacy of my mother.

My mother was a kind person, perhaps the kindest person I have known.  This manifested itself in how she was in our family (small and bigger), how she manifested her relationship with me, how she practiced that in the world as a schoolteacher, and how - even in the end - she manifested it during her final years with Alzheimer's.

Other patients could be argumentative or even violent.  Not my mother, who even when she did not recognize who we were, acted as though she did, a habit (I believe) maintained from years of teaching.  At one point she told me "I always wave back to children who wave at me, even if I don't remember them.  They remember me, and for me not to wave back would make them sad."

The world could benefit from more of my mother's ways.

---

I have no idea where or how this goes, to be honest.  But I am confident that since this idea was the sort of instinctive response, the "gut feeling" that one has before one can even think about it, that there is a reason for it.

If - for no other reason - my firm belief that kindness is maybe the virtue we are in need of most now.

A Day At The Beach

In spite of my recent notes about the weather being cloudy and rainy here for the better part of a month, last week were blessed with a cloud and rain-free day.  Where should one go?  To the beach, of course!

Although the weather had a chill if you were in the shade, in the sun it was perfect - too perfect; I had to shed a layer or two.

 

True low tide was about three hours away, so no tide pools for us this time.

I have not been back to this beach since I moved in March of 2024, which is a shame.  I have not lived so close in 35 years.

I love this picture, although I have no idea how I took it other than dumb luck:

Wave patterns in sand:

The hazy mist at the coast is always a marvel to me:

Once again, to the victors go the spoils:  Albacore fish and chips and sourdough bread pudding.  Hazy IPA (The Ravishing Mrs. TB) and Nitro Brown Ale (your host).

We noted to ourselves that we should plan a return in Spring.  So awesomely beautiful.

The Forty-Five 2026: A Primer

Greetings and welcome to 2026!

As has become a practice (since 2021, apparently), one of the first posts in the New Year is intended as a guide to places and characters that inhabit this particular corner of the world.  Due to concerns about my location being located by aliens (I wish; really it for the anonymity) everyone and most places here go by another name (for which even I have to keep a "process aide" to keep things together).  

I am your redoubtable host, Toirdhealbheach Beucail ("Toridhealbheach" is a version of my name in Old Irish Gaelic; "Beucail" means "booming or roaring", as in the sound of a cannon. If you ever met me in person, you would find I have only two volumes:  silent and "ON").  I have been taking up space on this corner of the InterWeb for this, my twentiyfirst year (as of July this year).

A very brief history: I grew up in a small town, the same town my parents and my mother's parents had grown up in. I went away to college for two degrees that have nothing to do with what I ended up actually doing, then came back home and lived in and around that area (referred to here uncreatively as "Old Home") until 15 years ago, when due to a layoff we had to move (to the also uncreatively named) "New Home".  Last year in 2024 after a series of two layoffs in 2024 (Hammerfalls 2.0 and 3.0), I have now ended up in equally uncreatively named "New Home 2.0", which is back closer to where I grew up.

I have a variety of interests.  I am a practitioner of Iaijutsu, a Japanese sword martial art.  I make cheese and other dairy foods.  I train with weights.  I write, both blogs and some kind of longer form.   I hike, mostly in the Sierra Nevadas but have also been down into the Grand Canyon.   I study languages, both current as well as the dead ones.  I read voraciously - primarily history and theology, but also philosophy, agricultural books and "old style" (say pre-1985) science fiction and fantasy.  I find myself doing far more travel than I originally anticipated.  In years past I have gardened, although the relocation has reduced this to more of a container gardening situation for the moment.

Dramatis Personae:

        - The Ravishing Mrs. TB:  To whom I have been married for over 30 years now and who actually makes sure the trains run on time and things get done.

     - Nighean Gheal: Number one daughter, a college graduate with a degree in International Business now living in the Cheongju province of South Korea, teaching English (at least through July of this year).

    - Nighaen Bhan: Number Two daughter, also a college graduate with a degree in Communications and pursuing a Master's level program in Speech Disorders (a.k.a., Speech Therapist).

     - Nighean Dhonn: Number Three daughter, currently studying Anthropology and Archaeology.

      - The Fiancé:  The fiancé of Nighean Bhan.   At some point I will have to come with a more original name.  As he is coming on a hike with us this year, something may present itself.

     - The Director:  One of my two best friends from High School and still currently one of my best friends.  Lives in Old Home, one of the most intelligent people I know.  Currently working on his Ph.D.  On an unusual note, he is practicing Quaker.

    - Uisdean Ruadh: The other of my two best friends from High School and still currently one of my best friends.  Also lives in Old Home, currently living in The Cabin at The Ranch.   Deeply Catholic, loves traditional Catholicism, planes, and history.  

  - The Berserker:  My weight training coach.  I have trained with him for 9+ years now.  I live in fear of his weekly training regimes, although they have been very successful.

- The Shield Maiden:  A friend I met throw Highland Games many years ago.  She lives much farther away than she used to (Picture the border of Canada and then move down.  Slightly.).  We chat via the InterWeb every day.  She is a reservoir of wisdom and the much needed lectures I will get from no-one else.

-La Contessa: My very good and old friend (post high school, so not quite as long as The Director and Uisdean Ruadh, but almost as long).  We regularly have dinners once a month when I am in Old Home.

-The Outdoorsman:  My brother-in-law and hiking partner in crime.  What started as lark of an idea (hiking the Grand Canyon) has turned into 3-4 smaller training hikes and a single big hike a year.

- The Cowboy/The Young Cowboy:  A father and son team, they have kept cattle at The Ranch for almost 20 years now.  They are regularly present there and help to keep an eye on the place when I am not present.

- The Brit:  My niece's husband who has also become a hiking partner in crime.

- Rainbow:  One of the earliest people involved with this blog, she lives in the larger vicinity of Old Home.  She and I speak more or less weekly about life, mostly disguised as a two person writer self-help group.

- The Dog Whisperer:  Another refugee from Hammerfall 3.0 who is at the other end of the country.  Loves dogs (and animals of all kinds).  

Important Places:

- Old Home:  Where I grew up and lived up to 15 years ago.  Originally a combination of the small town I actually grew up in  as well as the larger areas there which we lived in before moving to New Home, I use it more now to indicate my hometown.

- New Home:  Where up to March of 2024, we lived. An urban area located in a state not where I grew up. We still have a house there, but it has been replaced by....

- New Home 2.0:  Another urban area, in this case much closer to the state I grew up in.  This is where The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I now live (currently in an apartment).

- The Ranch:  The Ranch is the property my parents own and lived on in <insert yet another undisclosed location here>.  It is approximately 90 acres of land in the mountains which has been our extended family for over 60 years. As of last year, we made the decision to sell the property.

Like most budding bloggers, when I started this blog I had great visions of this being a mighty bulwark of discussion and thought that would be a beacon of light (and, coincidentally, would let me write full time). It only took about 10 years to realize that neither of these things were going to happen.  Either because of obstinance or foolishness (I am guilty of both) I persevered.

What I did find - and what I still believe in - is that blogging represents the Social Internet (not a phrase that I came up with, but one I love): the ability of people to read, think, and discuss things on the InterWeb (as opposed to Social Media, which I detest).  What has become critically important to me is creating a sort of InterWeb agora, a place where we can discuss subjects - some deep, some completely shallow - in a way that hopefully encourages thought and helps to build connections in a society which values neither thought nor connections except of the most shallow kind (otherwise known as Social Media).  Another unlooked-for at the time benefit which has manifested itself (I was not aware of it; a reader brought it to my attention) is that this is a place where the "real world" as such scarcely applies.  You will find nothing of politics or current events here, and only occasional notes about economics or society in general

What you will find here most days is a combination of personal on-line journal, thoughts or concepts that have run through my mind, book reviews, occasional fiction, things that are just "going on" in my life, ruminations, and the occasional meme.  It is a smorgasbord of my existence (there are literally times I sit down to write with no idea what will be written, and no-one is more surprised than I am when it shows up).

Important Pages:

Ichiryo Gusoku Philosophy:  My overall guiding policy on my philosophy is here. (A note:  I need update this in the coming year)

Ichiryo Gusoku Goals:  My overall aspirational goals are here   (See above).

What are the rules?

There are only four.

1)  Be kind:  In all my years of writing here, I have had to not publish only a handful of comments because, frankly, they were mean or just outright wrong-minded.  You can certainly poke holes in my theories or my writing or the responses of others.  I just ask you do it kindly.  Everyone you are responding to is going through something.

2)  No profanity:  My mother was an elementary school teacher and a lovely Christian woman, so comment as if you were speaking directly to her.  Any profanity will simply not make itself a visible comment, no matter how relevant or good the comment is.

3)  No arguing current politics:  Politics as it is practiced currently is simply an exercise in "It is your fault!  No, yours!" followed by vulgarity and crudeness.  Political Science (the practice of forming political societies and their functioning) is far more useful to actually reach a solution.  

4)  No arguing religion:  I state up front I am Christian (useful background for some of what I write) and will happily discuss my own trials and travails and thoughts.  What we do not debate is the nature of religion or different religions.  Again, see the previous comments on kindness.

Thanks!

Comments are always welcome, but even the act of just stopping by and reading (as an investment of time) is greatly appreciated.  

Happy New Year 2026 Edition

On New Year's Day 2025, I posted a picture along with my Happy New Year's Greeting (for reasons unknown to me, I did not do the same in 2025.  A failure on my part).  As it turns out - perhaps accidentally - that picture became a leitmotif for my year.

Which made me think:  if I were to set a theme for 2026, what would I like it to be?

Setting a theme is always something of a risk of course:  there are 365 days to run and, given my recent history, who knows what happens in that time.  But setting a theme can be quite different from what occurs during the year.  I cannot control the events, but I can control how I approach them.

This -  a repost from May of last year - is something that, a bit in conjunction with writing on Humility last year, I have come to see that I need work harder on. And not just writing on Humility; general discourse and interaction - even more so than I can remember - has devolved into "my-sideism" everywhere.  My realization last year that this was the "Age of Rage" does not seem to have abated at all.

And that is my hope, my intention - for me, for everyone I interact with, hopefully everyone that reads this.  To make this a year of being a good human being.

After all, I hear the opportunities to move up in the field are almost without limit.  And there remains very little competition of speak of.

Thank You: 2025 Edition

Dear Friends:

Continuing in what seems to be a tradition since 2020, I save the last post of the year to thank you, my readers.

This year was far less predictable and far more unexpected than I could have anticipated.  

Even though I "claim" to be a homebody, I somehow managed to go to seven countries and five states this year.  I completed my first full year and set of seasons in New Home 2.0, got promoted, got some very needed personal feedback which - although in theory about Iai - was really about life, hiked in the Grand Canyon, lead a small group for the first time in over 15 years, performed publicly on the harp for the first time in 30 years, attended three Iaijutsu seminars, and managed to grow peppers.

This year also saw a final (and heretofore) unexpected turn at The Ranch, the final relocation of The Ravishing Mrs. TB, and the arrival of A the Cat.  And, I got a new car.

It has been a bit of a year.

I have commented before that writing a blog is for me a form of therapy. In meaningful ways, I am more "myself" here than I am in the real world.  And yet, while this literary therapy is useful in and of itself, it helps to have company.

In other words, writers write to have others read their work.

And so, my annual grateful thanks to you, my readers.

Thank you for the gift of your time and interest, the two greatest gifts one person can give to another.  Thank you for your comments, no matter if you only ever comment once.  Thank you for your thoughts and inputs and sometimes helping me to clarify my own thinking.

I have no idea what 2026 will look like, or even what I will write about.  While I am overall happy with the programming I set up for myself last year in terms of days and what to write on, I do not know that everything I was writing was as fresh at the end of the year as it was at the beginning and pushed me as a writer in the ways I need to be pushed.

Thanks as always for your support.

Your Most Obedient Servant,

Toirdhealbheach Beucail

Our Real Work And Our Real Journey

I confess that I do not know as much Wendell Berry as I should.  That strikes me as a bit of shame, as the works of his that I have read (The Gift of Good Land, The Long-Legged House, The Unsettling of America) has resonated with me when I have read them.  I have not read his fiction, of which it seems there is nothing but good things written (Gene Logsdon spoke highly of him).

Berry can haunt me, the way that Gene Logsdon does when I read him, a combination of life as it is, a sort of wistful remembering of life as it was, an adaptation to life as it is, and a hopeful belief in live as it could be.  It is the sort of combination that very much seems at odds with so much of what pass for information exchange, entertainment, and knowledge in the modern world.  Too often only one of those things is mentioned or perhaps two, all with the strident clarion of an ill-tuned trumpet rather than the careful plucking of a harmony on strings.

---

I have to confess that here, at the end of 2025, I feel a bit lost, looking for that harmony.

There are multiple contributory parts; there always are of course, at last for the big problems.  One, rather simply, is that with the eventual pending sale of The Ranch and the effective relocation to New Home 2.0, there is a very odd sense of not having a "home" like I have in years past.  Home was as much of a geographic location as it was a place that my people were; now, for the first time, it is very much a nomadic concept based almost entirely on people who themselves are prone to move.

Another factor is simply the changing roles of life.  I remain a son, but in the remnant of my parents' existence, not an active role.  I remain a family member to an extended family that is moving farther apart as time goes on.  In my close family, I hold the role of father although in an advisory role instead of a parenting role - the same role, as it turns out, as in my job, where I give advice and experience with the tacit acknowledgement that this role could very well be my last one.

In my activities, I have the sudden realization that old things that I used to enjoy are just as enjoyable as they ever were, combined with the finite sense that there is only so much that I can do in a day, a week, a month, a year.  And that, like it or not, choices now have to made in some cases.

God?  Yes and no.  No, in the sense that this place, this church that we now attend, is one that I am meant to be at.  Yes in the sense that I do not know where my role is meant to be.

Even my writing, of late, has seemed more of a chore than a genuine pleasure.  It is not that there are not things to write about; perhaps it is simply that finding things to write about that are non-controversial becomes harder and harder.

Last perhaps, is simply my relationship with the the larger social and political world.  I find now, almost daily, that I truly belong nowhere and to no belief.  I often find myself in disagreement with one side, yet now more and more find myself in disagreement with the other.  There is a harsh rancor which fills too much of almost everything, print and video and audio. The edge in people's voices, whether verbal or written, becomes more evident almost daily.  

Berry's words ring true to me.

---

There is a sense - originally quiet, but growing louder as time goes on - that I am a turning a corner into 2026, a corner that has taken almost two years to manifest itself.

To use a hiking analogy, I have the equipment, I have a guide - but I have no known destination and no idea of what I will do along the way or when I arrive.  To be clear, that is a terrible way to hike. 

Strangely enough, this does not bother me as much as I might think that it would.

In some ways, the world is filled with possibilities again, the sorts of possibilities that have not appeared since maybe I was in college and "the future" was something to be defined, not a track that I had stumbled into and could now not escape due to the multitude of invisible threads that tied me to it.  There is a sense in which, for the first time in a long time, I can "choose".

And perhaps, as Berry suggests, I have finally arrived at my real work and real journey.  

What a remarkable thing, to in some ways be starting over.