Peter, What Are You Reading? 2023 in Books
I finished 16 books in 2023, and am making progress on several others!
To bring the year to a close, I wanted to highlight the books I finished in 2023 and showcase five more books that I still have on the go. While this series is normally behind the paywall, I wanted to give all my subscribers a peek into my Year-End In Books. It would mean a lot to me if you would consider taking out a paid subscription to start your 2024, so I’ve included a link for 20% off for 12 months below.
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Selected Completed Books
History of the Popes, Vol IV - Ludwig Pastor
Several years ago I sat down at the University of Waterloo Library and pulled Ludwig Pastor’s ‘History of the Popes, Vol I’ off the shelf. I spent two hours in a chair reading, and I knew that I would spend the rest of my life reading my way through Pastor’s 40 Volume series. Here’s what I had to say about Vol IV:
The fourth volume in Ludwig Pastor's 40+ volume set deals with the papacies of Pope Paul II (1464-1471) and Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484). Renaissance Popes, Sixtus IV is perhaps the most well-known of the two, having commissioned the Sistine Chapel's construction and it's initial side-wall frescoes, painted by some of the biggest names in Renaissance artistry. As always, Pastor is even-handed in dealing with his subjects, though it's clearly obvious that he is a partisan historian, most visible in his editorialized condemnation of church heretics.
The Notorious Bacon Brothers: Inside Gang Warfare on Vancouver Streets - Jerry Langton
This is the book that got 2023’s hyperfixation on organized crime going.
If you grew up in the Vancouver/Lower Mainland in the 90's and 2000's, you've probably run into someone who knows the notorious Bacon Brothers. I had the distinct 'pleasure' of being on W.J. Mouat's wrestling team with Jarrod and Jonathan Bacon in the late '90s, with their father David serving as a parent coach. Jonathan was a pretty nice kid, but Jarrod was a bully. This book, while not the best writing I've ever read, tells the inside story of the gang wars that cost so many young lives in the early 2000's, focusing on the Bacon Brothers role in the violence. It's such a surreal read, because I know so many names, faces, and places, and yet it's just like reading any other true crime book focused on organized crime, particularly ones focused on the Hell's Angels.
Mafia Inc.: The Long, Bloody Reign of Canada's Sicilian Clan - André Cédilot & André Noël
While the book on the Bacon Brothers whetted my appetite for knowledge of the Canadian underworld, Mafia, Inc. is the book that made Italian-based organizaed crime into 2023’s hyperfixation. Tracing the rise to power of Montreal’s Godfather Vito Rizzuto, Mafia Inc. opened my eyes to the fact that in the heydays of New York Drug City, nearly all of the poison was coming through the Port of Montreal, enriching Rizzuto and his gang of made men.
Mafia, Inc, translated from the French and written by two journalists who have followed the Montreal underworld for their entire careers, doesn't only recount the many, many killings that happened at the hands of the Rizzuto clan, but also goes into detail on how they effectively controlled the narcotics supply to New York, most of which came from Columbia, via Venezuela, before being shipped north and dropped into the cold waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway, where it was retrieved by Rizzuto associates and shipped south in trucks. Also included are the many examples of corruption that has been endemic to Quebec society since at least the 1950s. Unknown to most, the Rizzuto clan played a key role in the October Crisis, which saw the separatist FLQ kidnap Pierre LaPorte, who was Quebec's Minster of Labour. The book also includes details on how the Rizzuto clan was angling for contracts in the building of the Bridge of Messina, which would see a bridge built between Calabria, Italy's toe, and Sicily, the home of the Cosa Nostra. This scheme was taken as the source material for a fictional-movie-based-on-true-events of the same name, Mafia, Inc, which is currently playing on Netflix in Canada.
The Red Chesterfield - Wayne Arthurson
I picked this book up off the shelf at the public library and read it cover to cover in about an hour. Fiction is hard for me to read, but this book gripped me from the start, in part because of its minimalism. It's a fun twist on a Canadian crime caper, where every page is its own chapter. The book could very easily be converted into a stage show; it features an Indigenous main character who is forced to interact with the police in his white community, despite having done nothing wrong.
The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples - Roberto Saviano
Of the two Saviano books I read this year - the other being Gomorrah - this piece of fiction is probably my favourite. Written in a Neapolitan dialect native to Camorra business, I found the English translation was paired well with the audiobook, which created space for some of the nuances of local culture to shine through.
In the middle of the book, there is an interlude called "The Fuckers and the Fucked:"
There are the fuckers and the fucked, and nothing more. They exist everywhere, and they always have. The fuckers try to gain advantage from any situation, whether it’s a dinner someone else pays for, a free ride, a woman to take away from someone else, a competition to win. The fucked always get the worst of any situation.
The fucked don’t always seem like it, frequently they pretend to be fuckers, just as it is only natural that the opposite should exist as well, that is, that many of those who seem to be fucked are actually extremely violent fuckers: they pass themselves off as fucked in order to raise themselves to the rank of fuckers with a greater degree of unpredictability. To seem beaten or use tears and lamentations is a typical fucker strategy.
Let it be clear, there is no reference here to sex: however you’re born onto this earth, man or woman, you’re still divided into one of these two categories. And for that matter, the division of society into classes has nothing to do with it, either. That’s bullshit. What I’m talking about are categories of the spirit. You’re born a fucker, or you’re born fucked. And if you’re fucked, you can be born into any walk of life, into a mansion or a stable, and you’ll still find those who take away what you most care about, you’ll find the obstacle that keeps you back in your work and your career, you won’t be ableto harness within yourself the resources to achieve your dreams. Only the crumbs will be left to you.
The fucker may be born in a barracks or in an alpine hut, on the outskirts of town or in the center of the capital, but everywhere he turns he will find resources and fair winds, all the cazzimma, or the cruel strong-mindedness, and ambiguity necessary to obtain what he wants. The fucker achieves what he desires, while the fucked allows it to slip through his fingers, he loses it, he lets them take it away from him. The fucker might not even have as much power as the fucked, maybe the fucked has inherited factories and stock, but fucked he remains unless he manages to climb beyond the extra advantage offered him by good luck and laws that favor him. The fucker, on the other hand, knows how to reach beyond misfortune and can figure out how to use laws or pay to sidestep them, or even ignore them entirely.“From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule; and there are many kinds both of rulers and subjects.” That’s what good old Aristotle has to say. In other words, to put it concisely, you’re born either fucked or a fucker. The latter knows how to steal and deceive, and the former knows how to be stolen from and deceived.
Look inside yourself. Look deep inside yourself, but if you’re not ashamed, you’re not looking deep enough.
And then ask yourself if you’re fucked or a fucker.
Death Metal and Music Criticism - Michelle Phillipov
When I first highlighted Death Metal and Music Criticism in Peter, What Are You Reading № 8, I surmised that Pillipov’s point was that death metal, as a genre of extreme metal, was valuable on its own merits because its listeners found it pleasurable. While this is true - it is the second point the book aims to make - Phillipov’s first point is perhaps the more interesting point from the perspective of music criticism. Confronting music critics overly focused on political messaging, Phillipov writes,
Metal may have served as critics’ apotheosis of “bad” music, but an appreciation of its complexity and nuance is unavailable to any approach primarily concerned with evaluating its politics. Political questions are important, but simply chastising the music, the scene, and its fans for their reluctance to create for metal a radical politics ultimately tells us little about the kinds of affective investments that can motivate metal fandom or about the pleasures of listening to metal music. Rather than simply fostering oppressive social hierarchy, metal’s conventions of musical aggression, technical skill, and reflexive anti-reflexivity can instead be seen as offering experiences of disequilibrium, power, and intensity that cannot always be evaluated as simply “progressive” or “reactionary.” In fact, these conventions enable metal to effect a reorientation of conventional listening practices, the consequences of which cannot always be predicted in advance and which do not automatically comply with expected political precepts. If these listening practices and experiences are better understood, what might we learn about metal music?
The Rest of 2023’s Finished Books:
Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano
The Wolfpack: The Millennial Mobsters Who Brought Chaos and the Cartels to the Canadian Underworld - Peter Edwards
The ’Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita: The History, Organization and Operations of Two Unknown Mafia - Nicoletta Serenata
Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War - Peter Edwards
Bud Inc. - Iam Mulgrew
A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno - Joseph Bonnano
Shut Up You're Pretty - Tea Mutonji
Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited - Tom Shakespeare
The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius
Philosophy of Sex and Love: An Opinionated Introduction - Patricia Marino
Selected Books In Progress
The Case for Christian Nationalism - Stephen Wolfe
While I have yet to finish Wolfe’s book - it’s a slog - I committed at the beginning of the year to do a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the book. While most of the pieces are behind the paywall, the introduction to the series can be read here:
Necropolitics - Achille Mbembe
Recommended to me by my friend Fitsum Areguy, Necropolitics is one of my first introductions to Foucaultian African philosophy. Predicated on the premise that the many isms of the world, and in particular anti-Black racism, are not only intellectual realities, but they also have intended practical realities, namely the violent repression and eventual death of society’s marginalized. This book is intensely challenging for me, not only because it’s a type of philosophy to which I have traditionally turned up my nose, but also because as a white, straight, Canadian male, I fit the demographic of individuals that, collectively, cause the most amount of violent oppression to disadvantaged peoples all over the world.
Sex With Kings - Eleanor Herman
I first got my hands on this book back in grad school (2007) but because I was working on other stuff, I didn’t get a chance to read it. A well-researched piece of writing, Sex with Kings explores the sexual politics of royalty, concentrating primarily on the role of the mistress to the King. Focused primarily on the Middles Ages and the Early Modern Period, the book doesn’t only get into the sexual appetites of the King and his sexual partners, but it also explores the political, social, and economic ramifications of his choice or choices of extra-marital lover.
Aquarium: The Career and Defection of a Soviet Military Spy - Viktor Suvorov
I’ve long been interested in spy stories that involve the Soviet Union, but most of them are written from the perpective of Westerners, usually Americans. It’s no surprise that they tend to demonize Soviet agents, often making them look either like ruthless backstabbers or worthless chumps. Enter Viktor Suvorov, a Soviet spy who defected to the west in Geneva, Switzerland in 1978. In Aquarium, Suvorov, the pseudonym of Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun, details, in a very engaging style, his recruitment and training to the Soviet intelligence services before his eventual defection.
Away From The Dead - David Bergen
Longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize, this novel written by Manitoba author David Bergen is set in the steppes of Ukraine at the turn of the 20th Century, in the midst of rebellion within the Russian Empire. What makes this book personally interesting is that some of its main characters are Mennonites from the historical colonies in southeastern Ukraine, near present-day Zaporizhzhia. At about that time, my grandmother’s family moved to Siberia from one of the Ukrainian colonies, before escaping the Soviet Union to come to Canada in 1929.