books read: 2021

this year I read 107 books, which is in fourth-to-last place in terms of most books read since I've started doing a yearly Reading Queue. Just behind 2021 is 2018 (106 books), 2016 (102 books), and 2015 (a measly 57 books). I doubt I'll ever break 2019's record of a whopping 237 books.

~   Religion and History   ~

RELIGION

  The New Testament in its World (N.T. Wright & Michael F. Bird, 2019)

  Masculine Christianity (Zachary M. Garris, 2020)

  Revelation: Four Views (Steve Gregg, 1997)

  When the Man Comes Around (Douglas Wilson, 2019)

  Dark Agenda (David Horowitz, 2021)

  The Spine of Scripture (Bnonn Tennant, 2019)

  It's Good to be a Man (Michael Foster & Tennant, 2021)

  The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates (Michael Trewhella, 2014)

  Notes on Leviticus (Michael Heiser, 2021)

  Notes on the Book of Acts (Heiser, 2021)

  The Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book One (John Calvin)

  Romans (Calvin)

  Infant Baptism (Sean McGowan, 2020)

  Baptism: A Biblical Study (Jack Cottrell, 1990)

  Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up? (David Bercot, 1989)

  The Fitness Mindset (Brian Keane, 2017)

  The Unseen Realm

    The Unseen Realm (Heiser, 2019)

    Demons (Heiser, 2020)

    Slaying Dragons (Daniel Kolenda, 2020)

    Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Derek and Sharon Gilbert, 2021)

    Last Clash of the Titans (Derek Gilbert, 2018)

    Bad Moon Rising (Gilbert, 2019)

    The Omega Conspiracy (I.D.E. Thomas, 2007)

HISTORY

  American History in Black and White (David Barton, 2017)

  The New World (Winston Churchill, 2013)

  Hannibal (Patrick N. Hunt, 2018)

  The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny (Daisy Dunn, 2019)

  Crusaders (Dan Jones, 2019)

  The Discarded Image (C.S. Lewis, 2020)

  A Short History of Europe (Simon Jenkins, 2019)

  A Journey to the New World (Kathryn Lasky, 1996)

  The Napoleonic Wars (Gunther Rothenburg, 1999)

  The Somme (Martin Gilbert, 2007)

  Pacific Air (David Sears, 2011)

  Landing in Hell: Pelileu (Peter Maragritis, 2018)

  I Marched with Patton (Frank Sisson, 2020)

  Every Man a Hero: A Memoir of D-Day (Ray Lambert, 2020)

  Supernova in the East (Dan Carlin, 2020)

~  Fiction and Literature  ~

HISTORICAL FICTION

  Historical Fiction of the Ancient and Medieval World

    The Odyssey (Gareth Hinds, 2010)

    Gates of Fire: The Battle of Thermopylae (Steven Pressfield, 1998)

    Tides of War: The Tale of Alcibiades (Pressfield, 2001)

    The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (Pressfield, 2004)

    Samurai Rising (Pamela S. Turner and Hinds, 2016)

 Historical Fiction of the Napoleonic Era, continued...

    The Nutmeg of Consolation, 1813 (Patrick O'Brian, 1991)
    The Truelove, 1813 (O'Brian, 1992)
    The Wine-Dark Sea, 1813 (O'Brian, 1993)
    The Commodore, 1813 (O'Brian, 1995)

    The Yellow Admiral, 1814 (O'Brian, 1996)

    The Hundred Days, 1815 (O'Brian, 1999)

    Sharpe's Waterloo: The Waterloo Campaign, 1815 (Bernard Cornwell, 1990)
    Blue at the Mizzen, 1816 (O'Brian, 1999)

    Sharpe's Devil: Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820-1821 (Cornwell, 1992)

  Historical Fiction of the Second World War

    To Wake the Giant: A Novel of Pearl Harbor (Jeff Shaara, 2020)

    Pacific Glory (P.T. Deutermann, 2011)

    The Silver Waterfall: The Battle of Midway (Kevin Miller, 2020)

    The Nugget (Deutermann, 2019)

    Sentinels of Fire (Deutermann, 2013)

    The Commodore (Deutermann, 2016)

    Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, 1961)

    Devastation Road (Jason Hewitt, 2015)

    The Good Shepherd (C.S. Forester, 2018)

    Run Silent, Run Deep (Edward Beach, 1956)

  Historical Fiction of the Vietnam War

    The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien, 2009)

    Matterhorn (Karl Marlantes, 2009)

    The 13th Valley (John Del Vacchio, 1982)

A PANOPLY OF FICTION

  We Are Unprepared (Meg Little Reilly, 2016)

  The Street Lawyer (John Grisham, 1998)

  Onslaught (David Poyer, 2016)

  Red Phoenix (Larry Bond, 1989)

  Liberty's Last Stand (Stephen Coonts, 2016)

  Crescent Dawn (Clive Cussler, 2010)

  Roadwork (Stephen King, 1974)

  Insomnia (King, 1994)

  Wizard and Glass (King, 2016)

  Night Shift (King, 1978)

  Science Fiction

    Persepolis Rising (James S.A. Corey, 2017)

    Tiamat's Wrath (Corey, 2018)

    Starfish (Peter Watts, 2000)

    Old Man's War (John Scalzi, 2005)

    Footfall (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1985)

    Engineering Infinity (The Infinity Project, 2011)

    Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero (Sean Chen and Travis Beacham, 2013)

  Fantasy

    Before They Are Hanged (Joe Abercrombie, 2007)

    The Last Argument of Kings (Abercrombie, 2008)

    The Mad Lancers (Brian McClellan, 2020)

    The Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan, 2016)

    Blood of Elves (Andrzej Sapkowski, 2009)

    World War Z (Max Brooks, 2006)

    Half a War (Abercrombie, 2015)

    Kings of the Wyld (Nicholas Eames, 2017)

    The Shadow of What Was Lost (James Islington, 2014)

    The Rage of Dragons (Evan Winter, 2019)

    The Grey Bastards (Jonathan French, 1918)

    The Bone Ships (R.J. Barker, 2019)

    Star Wars Legends, continued...

      From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back (Del Ray, 2020)

      X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar (Aaron Allston, 1999)

      The New Rebellion (Kristine Rusch, 1997)

  American Westerns

    All The Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy, 1992)

    Death Without Company (Craig Johnson, 2007)

    Kindness Goes Unpunished (Johnson, 2008)

    Spirit of Steamboat (Johnson, 2013)

    Wild Justice (Loren D. Estleman, 2018)

    Boone's Lick (Larry McMurtry, 2001)

    The Revenant (Michael Punke, 2002)

    A Good Day for a Massacre (William & J.A. Johnstone, 2020)

    Springfield 1880 (Johnstone, 2018)

    The Chuckwagon Trail (Johnstone, 2017)

the month in snapshots

 

Dino of the Week: Saltriovenator

Type Species: Saltriovenator zanellai

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia – Theropoda - Ceratosauria

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: Italy

Diet: Carnivore

The twenty-five-foot long and one-ton Saltriovenator was the megapredator of the Early Jurassic. Its remains were discovered in modern Italy (what would’ve been southern Laurasia) in what would’ve been a watery grave. The specimen had died and been washed out to sea (or in a bay) where it was scavenged by marine organisms. At least thirty bore marks on the bones come from a variety of marine invertebrates, and its remains were entombed with a single tooth and jaw fragment from a bony fish. Saltriovenator has the unlucky distinction of being the first dinosaur discovered to have been gnawed upon by marine animals. 

The find gets even more intriguing: Saltriovenator was a large, bipedal carnivore similar to the much later Jurassic predator Ceratosaurus, and it’s classified as the oldest known ceratosaur. It was much stockier and larger than other Early Jurassic theropods, and other theropods of its size wouldn’t crop up in the fossil record until another 25 million years later. Saltriovenator’s large size took place in tandem with the emergence and gradual enlargement of sauropod herbivores, suggesting a prehistoric ‘arms race’ between predator and prey. As Dr. Simone Maganuco writes, “The evolutionary ‘arms race’ between stockier predatory and giant herbivorous dinosaurs, involving progressively larger species, [began] 200 million years ago” – more than twenty million years earlier than scientists had previously believed. 

Dino of the Week: Barapasaurus

Type Species: Barapasaurus tagorei

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Cetiosauridae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: India

Diet: Herbivore

The Early Jurassic sauropod Barapasaurus is one of the few dinosaurs that have been discovered on the Indian subcontinent. It lived during the Sinemurian and Pliensbachian stages of the Early Jurassic (199-182 million years ago). Over 300 Barapasaurus fossils were discovered in the Godavari Valley of south central Indian in 1961. The remains included no skulls or feet, but it was determined that the remains belonged to at least six individuals. The fossils were found among large tree trunks scattered over an area of over 250 square meters. Paleontologists speculate this assemblage was due to a catastrophic flood, in which the herd of these early sauropods in a conifer forest were swept away – along with the trunks of their foodstuffs – and deposited a distance away. As they began to decompose, the bones began to disarticulate, and the disarticulated skull bones were removed by the residual water streams because they were light. 

Barapasaurus was an early sauropod, and it exemplified many of the derived sauropod traits. An adult reached about sixty-six feet from head-to-tail, and it had the elongated neck and tail of the sauropods. It had a short trunk and columnar limbs. Its vertebrae show signs of transitioning to the type seen in more derived sauropods: though Barapasaurus had rudimentary weight-saving scoops or hollows common in sauropods, they were less prevalent than those found in later sauropods. Only three whole teeth and three crowns have been discovered. The largest known tooth is 5.8 centimeters in height. Its teeth were spoon-shaped and show wrinkled enamel, as is the case with derived sauropods. Barapasaurus was likely slow and plodding, feeding for many hours a day. It stripped vegetation and swallowed its food without chewing, allowing gastroliths in the gut to break down the food for processing. 

Dino of the Week: Kotasaurus

Type Species: Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia – Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Eusauropoda

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: India

Diet: Herbivore

The thirty-foot-long and 2.5-ton Kotasaurus was one of the earliest known sauropods. It shared its habitat with another sauropod, Barapasaurus. The fossilized remains of twelve individuals – lacking, unfortunately, their skulls (though two teeth have been recovered!) – were discovered in India. The remains were jumbled together in what had been a Jurassic riverbed, and scientists speculate that the herd drowned in a flash flood and was washed to a bend in the river where they were deposited en masse. Only the heaviest bones remained to be fossilized, for after the floodwaters receded, their carcasses would’ve been set upon by scavengers. The absence of skulls isn’t surprising, since skulls are very loosely connected to the spine and thus easily wrenched free and taken to other locations for eating. Kotasaurus had a heavy body, a long neck and tail, columnar limbs, spoon-shaped teeth, and a horizontal posture.  

Dino of the Week: Lufengosaurus

Type Species: Lufengosaurus young

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Prosauropoda

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore

Lufengosaurus lived in China during the Early Jurassic around 190 million years ago. It’s similar to its contemporary Yunnanosaurus: both were prosauropods that reached to about twenty-three feet in length and half a ton in weight (though some more recent estimates have put Lufengosaurus at up to thirty feet long); both had small heads with long necks and tails, tubby torsos, and both were quadrupedal; both had deep and broad snouts; both had shorter forelimbs than hind-limbs (though Lufengosaurus’ were slightly shorter relative to the hind-limbs); and both were named only one year apart by the same paleontologist. These coincidences prompted theories that Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus were the same dinosaur with intraspecies variation. This would mean that Yunnanosaurus was actually a variant species of Lufengosaurus, since Lufengosaurus was named first, in 1941. Others have built upon this theory and added a twist: both Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus may have been different species of the earlier Massospondylus. Thus all three would be species of Massospondylus, and paleontological textbooks would need to be rewritten. These theories have fallen out of vogue, however, due to the fact that Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus differ wildly when it comes to their teeth. Whereas Yunnanosaurus teeth were narrow and spoon-shaped (like those of sauropods), Lufengosaurus retained the widely-spaced, leaf-shaped teeth common to early sauropodomorphs. 

Lufengosaurus was herbivorous, though – like all prosauropods – it had sharp claws, especially on its thumbs, and sharp, serrated teeth. This has led some to speculate that Lufengosaurus – along with its prosauropod kin – was omnivorous. However, modern herbivorous iguanas have sharp teeth and claws, and they don’t eat meat. The strongest theory is that Lufengosaurus was herbivorous, using its sharp claws for defense or for raking foliage from trees. This prosauropod has made headlines at least twice after its discovery. First, its fossilized embryos have been discovered, and they represent the earliest evidence of vertebrate soft tissue preservation. Second, in 2017 scientists discovered 195-million-year-old collagen protein (used in connective tissues) in the fossilized rib bone of a Lufengosaurus. 

the year in books [XII and XIII]

The latest (and likely last) installment of my 2021 Reading Queue is a slurry of fantasy and science-fiction novels and a spattering of American westerns. Highlights of this batch include the last two books of Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy, Before They Are Hanged and The Last Argument of Kings. He has a few more books in the series beyond the trilogy, one of which I've already read and loved. I plan on reading a bit of him each year until I'm all caught up. In the western genre, the highlights were Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses - the first book of his Border Trilogy - and The Revenent, the book upon which the Leonardo DiCaprio movie is based. The book was far better than the movie, of course.

the book was better than the movie, of course