Archive for December 24th, 2021

Further adventures in hoplobibilophilia, plus random gun crankery.

Friday, December 24th, 2021

One of the problems joys of being a hoplobibliophile (as opposed to being a normal person, or even a normal book collector): you buy a book on a particular gun for some reason. It might be well put together and illustrated, or it might just be cheap. Whatever. Next thing you know…you’re wanting the gun to go with the book.

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’twas the night before Christmas…

Friday, December 24th, 2021

Chartwell Booksellers sent this over, and I thought I’d share it with everyone:

Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve message, December 24, 1941.

Slightly longer version (Chartwell dropped the opening paragraph) from the International Churchill Society.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

(Ugly Christmas Beanie from Magpul (affiliate link). I don’t know that you’ll be able to get one on or before the 25th: but as all people of goodwill know, the Christmas season runs through January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany, and thus your ugly Christmas beanie (or sweater, if you live someplace that cold) is appropriate wear at least through then.)

Obit watch: December 24, 2021.

Friday, December 24th, 2021

Joan Didion. LAT. THR.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

By way of Lawrence: a selection of her writing from National Review.