Classically Abby - 10 Books I WANT To Read In 2021 ｜｜ Conservative books included!

00:00:00.000 Hello Classic Crew and welcome to today's video where I'm going to be talking about 10 books I

00:00:05.600 want to read in 2021. So we've been in the month of January for quite a bit now but something that

00:00:14.800 I like to do at the beginning of each year is to go through my goals and what I would like to

00:00:19.140 accomplish over the year and for the first time in my life I actually made a vision board. I know

00:00:25.420 it sounds a little hokey and maybe it is but as somebody who's very visual it is super helpful

00:00:31.320 for me to take a look at my vision board whenever I'm starting to get bogged down in the day-to-day

00:00:35.940 stuff so I can keep in mind what the bigger picture is and the things that I'd really like to accomplish

00:00:41.200 over the course of the year. But one of the things that I have dedicated myself to this year is to

00:00:46.040 read more. I used to read books all the time. I still read but not nearly as much as I would like

00:00:51.400 to. So I thought by giving myself a goal of reading 20 books in 2021 that it would give me

00:00:58.820 something to work towards. Now hopefully I can actually read 20 books but the books that I've

00:01:03.880 chosen are not easy. I'm not reading just kind of fluffy super easy fiction stuff that you can pick

00:01:09.680 up at the bookstore in their kind of bestseller section where it's just a little bit more simple.

00:01:14.960 The stuff that I've chosen to read is heavy so that means that each book will take me a little bit

00:01:19.520 longer to read. So if I don't get through 20 books this year at least I'll have gotten through a good

00:01:24.960 number of books that I feel good about having read. So I thought I would share with you 10 of the books

00:01:31.360 on my list that I am planning on reading this year because I am looking forward to investing more time

00:01:37.840 into making myself better and reading better books. So let's get into it. P.S. If my voice sounds a

00:01:44.720 little weird today it's because this is the day after I had surgery. I talked about that in my last

00:01:50.640 scoop video and I think I'm going to be talking about it a little bit more in my upcoming scoop

00:01:55.940 video. Just kind of my experience and how everything went. But if I sound weird that's why I got the

00:02:02.140 surgery yesterday and my voice is still sort of recovering. Apparently anesthesia can just kind of

00:02:06.880 give you a sore throat. So that's where we're at but let's hop in. The first book that is on my list

00:02:13.540 is called Judaism Straight Up. So this book was written by Moshe Koppel and this is the description

00:02:19.280 on Amazon. In Judaism Straight Up, Moshe Koppel explores the central differences between traditional

00:02:24.780 societies, including traditional Judaism, and contemporary cosmopolitan ones. He explains

00:02:29.940 everything you always wanted to know about the subtleties of Jewish morality, tradition, and belief

00:02:34.080 and how these have unfolded to beat cosmopolitanism at its own game, advancing cooperation, fairness,

00:02:40.040 and freedom. Written with incisiveness and droll wit and a scientific sensibility that draws on

00:02:45.360 economics, game theory, and other disciplines, Judaism Straight Up reveals the secret of Jewish 0.99

00:02:50.360 traditionalism's endurance. So I'm reading this because I am a religious Jew and I think this topic

00:02:56.480 is really interesting. Having read Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind before reading this book

00:03:01.320 is so helpful. Makes everything so much clearer. It is so helpful because a lot of the ideas that

00:03:06.780 Moshe Koppel talks about Jonathan Haidt talked about in The Righteous Mind. So that's kind of a

00:03:11.640 cool hand-in-hand sort of thing. But I've already started the book. I'm about 100 pages in and I am

00:03:17.400 really enjoying it. I feel like I'm really starting to learn more about kind of this idea that being a

00:03:25.440 religious Jew means that you sort of have to straddle the line between tradition and modernity 0.98

00:03:30.540 because you are in a modern world. You are dealing with modern ideas of morality and stuff like that

00:03:38.280 but you are living a more traditional life. So I think it's interesting to see what he has to say

00:03:44.480 about that and I'm really looking forward to finishing it. I'm probably going to do a video

00:03:48.060 on it and I'm excited to share it with you guys. Number two is basic economics. So I started this in

00:03:54.260 2020 but the book is very large. This is the size of the book. So it's not something that I'm expecting

00:04:01.520 to finish all in a week. I'm expecting to kind of read it throughout the year but hopefully I can

00:04:07.000 finish it faster than that. I loved it when I started it. It is so easy to understand. I'm telling

00:04:13.620 you if you are somebody who's trying to understand economics and sees this book and thinks it's too big

00:04:17.760 it's going to be too much for me you're totally wrong. This book is so easy to read. It is not hard to

00:04:23.760 read. I have understood every single concept that Thomas Sowell has written about. Thomas Sowell is

00:04:28.860 the author and it is fantastic. I'm highly recommending it even though I haven't finished

00:04:34.040 the book yet because I can tell where he's going with it and I can understand everything and that is

00:04:38.900 so awesome. So I'm really excited to finish this in 2021. Hopefully I will finish it soon. Number three

00:04:46.120 is zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. So my dad recommended this to me a while ago so I figured

00:04:53.020 it was probably time for me to read it. It was written by Robert Peersig and this is the description

00:04:57.880 on Amazon. One of the most influential books written in the past half century, Robert Peersig's

00:05:02.920 zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance is a powerful examination of how we live and a

00:05:07.500 breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Following a father and his young son on a summer

00:05:11.880 motorcycle trip across America's northwest, it is a story of love, fear, growth, discovery, and acceptance.

00:05:17.480 Both personal and philosophical, it is a compelling study of relationships, values, and eventually

00:05:22.040 enlightenment, resonant with the confusions and wonders of existence. So I did start reading

00:05:27.040 this book already and it does sort of read like a novel. It's easy to read and you're getting these

00:05:32.220 big ideas in an easy to digest way. So I think I'm really going to enjoy it. I like books that teach

00:05:38.060 you a lesson so this is a book that seems like it's going to do that and I am excited to read it this

00:05:43.360 year. The next book on my list, number four, is Freud, The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Cruz.

00:05:49.900 So my husband actually bought this for me when we first got married. He went to the bookstore and

00:05:54.460 picked me up a present because he knows I'm interested in Freud and psychology and this book

00:05:59.160 sort of picks apart Freud and I thought that was interesting. I never actually got around to reading

00:06:03.820 it so this is the year I'm going to read it. Here's the description on Amazon.

00:06:07.340 Sigmund Freud is one of the most influential figures of Western society. His ideas transformed

00:06:12.540 the way that we think about our minds, ourselves, and even our thoughts. But while he was undeniably

00:06:16.820 a visionary thinker, Freud's legend was also the work of years of careful mythologizing and a fierce

00:06:22.200 refusal to accept criticism or scrutiny of his often unprincipled methods. In Freud, The Making of an

00:06:28.400 Illusion, Frederick Cruz dismantles Freud's totemic reputation brick by brick. Looking at recently revealed

00:06:34.880 correspondence, he examines Freud's own personality, his selfishness, competitiveness, and willingness

00:06:39.940 to cut corners and exploit weaknesses to get his own way. He explores Freud's wholehearted embracing

00:06:45.120 of cocaine as a therapeutic tool and the role it played in his own career. And he interrogates

00:06:49.940 Freud's intellectual legacy, exposing how many of his ideas and conclusions were purely speculative

00:06:55.420 or taken wholesale from others. This book looks super interesting. I actually really love biographies

00:07:00.740 and this is a biography, but it's from a little bit of a different perspective. It's not just talking

00:07:04.580 up the man who the book is about, it's actually kind of picking him apart. So this sounds like it's

00:07:09.140 going to be really interesting and I'm excited to read it because I think many of us know that a lot of

00:07:13.380 Freud's ideas were not actually that accurate to the human mind, but it's so much of what we talk about

00:07:21.140 as far as psychoanalysis and psychology. And so I'm interested to see, okay, how much of this

00:07:26.580 is based on just Freud's own problems. It just sounds fascinating. So that's another thing I'm

00:07:32.140 excited to read. Next up is Anna Karenina in Our Time. So this was written by Gary Saul Morrison

00:07:37.680 and Gary Saul Morrison is actually a mentor of my husband's. My husband went to Northwestern and

00:07:43.260 Gary Saul Morrison was a teacher there. So he wrote this book. I read Anna Karenina a couple of years ago

00:07:48.160 and fell in love with it. I absolutely, great book. If you haven't read Anna Karenina, you should read it.

00:07:53.940 It's fantastic. But I've only heard great things about Anna Karenina in Our Time, which takes a look

00:08:00.080 at Anna Karenina and how we should be using it to inform us now. So I'm going to read you the

00:08:05.060 description. In this invigorating new assessment of Anna Karenina, Gary Saul Morrison overturns

00:08:10.220 traditional interpretations of the classic novel and shows why readers have misunderstood Tolstoy's

00:08:14.380 characters and intentions. Morrison argues that Tolstoy's ideas are far more radical than has been

00:08:19.360 thought. His masterpiece challenges deeply held conceptions of romantic love, the process of social

00:08:24.820 reform, modernization, and the nature of good and evil. By investigating the ethical, philosophical,

00:08:30.020 and social issues with which Tolstoy grappled, Morrison finds in Anna Karenina powerful connections

00:08:34.640 with the concerns of today. He proposes that Tolstoy's effort to see the world more wisely

00:08:39.040 can deeply inform our own search for wisdom in the present day. Anna Karenina in Our Time

00:08:43.900 actually delves into the ideas that Tolstoy was trying to get across and sort of how it's been

00:08:49.440 bastardized today to treat Anna Karenina herself as the heroine when she's not. So this is another

00:08:54.820 book that I'm really excited to get my hands on. So the next thing I'm reading is something that's

00:08:58.580 going to be a little bit more on the lighter side because I have been telling you a bunch of books

00:09:03.200 that are quite in-depth, quite heavy, and so this one I just thought would be nice to break it up,

00:09:08.220 and it is called A Historical Tour of Walt Disney World. This was written by Andrew Kist, and it

00:09:14.100 looks really fun. It looks really fascinating. The whole story of Walt Disney World is super cool.

00:09:19.640 If you haven't watched the documentary The Imagineering Story, which is on Disney+, you really

00:09:24.100 should because it is fascinating, all of the things that go into creating these parks. It's really,

00:09:29.400 really cool. So I thought I would pick up the book and read it. It's just something a little bit

00:09:33.460 lighter, but it's still fascinating and interesting to me, so I'm really excited to dig into that

00:09:37.540 because I love the history of theme parks. I think that that's so fascinating to read about

00:09:43.140 and to learn about. Number seven is War and Peace. So I did start this last year, but I definitely got

00:09:49.640 sidetracked. It's intimidating. This book is so many pages, but I loved Anna Karenina so much I couldn't

00:09:57.020 not read War and Peace, so I'm excited to sit down and really invest time into reading it. I recognize

00:10:03.380 it is going to be a project, but I would love to actually know this book and understand this book,

00:10:10.520 and something I would like to say, something my husband taught me. So both of us are Russian

00:10:14.880 literature people. We love Russian literature, and something he learned from his mentor, Gary Saul

00:10:20.840 Morrison, is that the translation really matters. There's a new set of translators on the scene.

00:10:25.880 Their names are Richard Pavir and Larissa Volokonsky, and they are not the people you should be

00:10:31.480 reading for translations. Constance Garnett is probably the best one to read for translations,

00:10:37.080 but essentially what it comes down to is when you're translating Russian literature,

00:10:40.540 you can either try and translate it word for word, where you're not getting the meaning or intention

00:10:45.180 of what the author was actually trying to write, or you can translate it and try and get the idea of

00:10:50.720 what the author was saying, even if it's not exactly word for word. These new translators are doing

00:10:55.300 the word for word thing. So a lot is getting lost in translation emotionally and with the intention

00:11:01.100 of what the author was trying to say, as opposed to little nitty-gritty language things, which make the

00:11:05.700 books lose their heart. So I would not recommend buying the new fancy books that are translated by these

00:11:11.040 new translators. Instead, look for some of the older translations, because they were translating the book

00:11:16.240 for its intention, and that's actually better. So in any case, I am looking forward to reading

00:11:22.200 War in Peace. It's a big investment, but it's something I really have been wanting to finish for a long time,

00:11:27.440 and I think that I should get as much out of it as I did out of Anna Karenina. I love Tolstoy. Tolstoy

00:11:34.020 is one of my favorite authors, so hopefully this is something I can accomplish in 2021, but I won't be too hard

00:11:39.780 on myself if I don't, because War in Peace is very long. Number eight is The Splendid and the Vile. So I

00:11:46.000 love Eric Larson. He wrote The Devil in the White City. He wrote In the Garden of Beasts. I just love

00:11:52.040 his writing. I think it's fantastic, and I picked up The Splendid and the Vile last year. Again, I

00:11:56.560 started it, and I didn't finish it, but I was enjoying it before I stopped, and it is about

00:12:01.040 Winston Churchill, so I will pull up and read for you the description on Amazon. On Winston Churchill's

00:12:05.820 first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had

00:12:11.280 already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next 12 months, Hitler would 0.99

00:12:16.600 wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold

00:12:21.980 his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy

00:12:25.400 ally and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Eric Larson shows, in

00:12:30.600 cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people the art of being fearless. There's a

00:12:35.120 little bit more written here, but the idea of reading a book about Churchill and how he dealt

00:12:40.480 with being prime minister during World War II, and also his family drama. I just, I can't

00:12:45.440 wait, because Eric Larson writes history like it's novels. He writes history like they're

00:12:49.460 fiction, and that's, to me, my favorite. I like reading stories, so this is something I'm excited

00:12:54.280 to read and to continue reading. Clearly, I got started in a lot of books in 2020 that I didn't

00:12:59.180 finish, so 2021 almost feels like the year of finishing books I've started, but I still am

00:13:04.940 excited to read it. Number nine is The President, The Pope, and The Prime Minister. This was

00:13:10.060 written by John O'Sullivan, and I was actually inspired to read this after watching The Crown

00:13:14.320 and seeing the way that they portrayed Margaret Thatcher. I thought to myself, this doesn't

00:13:18.820 seem super accurate. This seems biased. I would like to know more about her, and so I was trying

00:13:24.180 to think about what I wanted to read next to kind of learn about her, and I figured out that this book

00:13:29.160 seemed like a good fit, because it was also going to teach me a little bit about Reagan and was also

00:13:32.760 going to teach me a little bit about the Pope. So I'm going to read you the description on Amazon,

00:13:37.520 which says the President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister is a sweeping dramatic account of how

00:13:41.780 three great figures changed the course of history. All of them led with courage, but also with great

00:13:47.100 optimism. The Pope helped ordinary Poles and East Europeans banish their fear of Soviet communism,

00:13:52.520 convincing them that liberation was possible. The Prime Minister restored her country's failing

00:13:56.360 economy by reviving the vigorous virtues of the British people. The President rebuilt America's

00:14:01.400 military power, its national morale, and its preeminence as leader of the free world.

00:14:06.000 Together they brought down an evil empire and changed the world for the better.

00:14:10.360 So this book looks fascinating. I love the idea of intertwining these three figures in history,

00:14:16.740 and of course they were intertwined of their own accord, but also having a book that talks about

00:14:20.840 the three of them on their own, but also in relation to each other, sounds absolutely fascinating.

00:14:25.180 So this book I think is going to be a great addition to the list, and I'm excited to see what

00:14:29.120 it will teach me. And the last book that is on my list is actually the Torah. I haven't read the Torah,

00:14:34.560 the Old Testament, the Bible, in a little while, and I would love to reread it probably in the English

00:14:41.360 initially, and then I would love to go back and read it in the Hebrew with the commentaries. So I

00:14:46.200 have read it in Hebrew a few times, and I've read the commentaries, but I think it would be interesting

00:14:49.880 for me to read it in English because, you know, English is my first language. So it would be,

00:14:54.120 it's going to read a little bit more close to home, and then when I go back to read it in the

00:14:59.840 Hebrew, which is the language it was originally written in, and I do understand, I'll get an even 0.74

00:15:04.980 deeper sense of it. I think that'll be really cool to read the Torah and the Bible almost like a book.

00:15:11.520 Of course it's so much more than just a book. It's so much more to me and to so many of you,

00:15:17.060 I'm sure, but I think it would be interesting to sort of try and read it that way and internalize

00:15:23.300 it as a story because that's how we learn, is through stories. I can also listen to it on

00:15:27.780 Audible, which is cool, and I think it'll be important for me to take that time this year,

00:15:32.760 and then of course if I have extra time I'd like to read Nevi'im, which is prophets, and Ketuvim,

00:15:36.460 which is writings. So then I would read all of Tanakh, which is the Torah, the prophets, and the

00:15:42.120 writings as one group. So those are just 10 of the books that I am excited to be reading this year.

00:15:47.120 I hope that maybe some of you guys will find some inspiration in this list, and you guys will read

00:15:51.020 them too, or if you've already read them, I'd love to hear that in the comments. It's a pretty

00:15:54.760 conservative list. It's got a lot of books there that were written by conservatives, which is cool,

00:16:00.400 and also has a more conservative viewpoint on the world, which is nice. And as I read each one,

00:16:07.940 I'll be able to put it on my vision board and on my reading list, and by the end of the year,

00:16:11.740 hopefully I'll have read more than I did last year. So thank you guys so much for watching today's

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00:16:30.940 you would like to donate and support my channel, you can head over to classicallyabbey.locals.com

00:16:35.200 to get ad-free versions of these videos. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you in the

00:16:40.100 next one. Bye!

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Classically Abby - January 19, 2021

10 Books I WANT To Read In 2021 ｜｜ Conservative books included!

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