Once again, it is that time of year to bring out the old tradition stretching back… well, about 4 years now, I suppose, where your ‘umble servant provides an overview of the best books that he has read over the course of 2017.

It was quite a year for me in terms of reading- some 58 books, which handsomely fulfilled my longstanding goal to read at least one book per week on average. Castalia House again knocked it out of the park in 2017, publishing a long string of exceptionally high quality books.

It is worth mentioning that a few of the books that I read this year were re-reads, such as John Ringo’s The Last Centurion and, of course, Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. I also re-read Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie and SJWs Always Double Down over the last two days, but I will only be counting the latter in my list since I read it this year for the first time.

And as always, my book list for 2017 will be moved to a standalone post in the New Year so that readers can go check out the Amazon pages for them and buy or borrow them as required.

So, here are my picks for the year:

The Didact’s Top 5 Non-Fiction Books of 2017

1. What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson

As I described him in my full-length review of his autobiography, Bruce Dickinson is one of the few living examples around today of a true polymath. There seems to be nothing that he cannot do or has not done. His list of achievements and accomplishments is frankly dizzying, and now he can add “bestselling author” to his list of impeccable credentials. Bruce takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through his life, times, and music, and shares a lot of hilarious, touching, and ridiculous stories along the way. A terrific, funny, brilliant read for metalheads, and absolutely required reading for IRON MAIDEN fans.

2.The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

This book is without question one of the most important collections of wisdom and insight ever written in all of human history.

Robert Greene breaks down the methods by which one may acquire, preserve, and use power over other people in astonishing detail. Critics have argued that this book is “amoral”, but Mr. Greene himself points out that the acquisition of power is merely a means to an end, and as such is no more or less moral than the end itself. Furthermore, he rightly points out that the most dangerous men in the world are not those with power; they are the men who claim to be disinterested in power and remove themselves from the power games entirely. This makes them exceedingly dangerous to men who seek power, for by refusing to search for it, those men are themselves exercising a form of power that they refuse to recognise.

This book needs to be re-read several times and used as a reference text as often as possible. Superbly written, drawing from endless examples, and exceptionally insightful, this one is a classic for the ages.

3. SJWs Always Double Down (The Laws of Social Justice Book 2) by Vox Day

The second of work of the Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) concerning the vagaries and dangers of Social Justice Warriors and their demented ideology once again finds His Voxness in fine form, as he shows how SJWs have evolved since the beatings that they took at the hands of #GamerGate and the Rabid Puppies in 2015 and went into full meltdown mode in 2016 with the election of the God-Emperor. The previous book spent quite a lot of time detailing the attack pattern that SJWs use to take down and destroy an individual target. In this book, the Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) provides the reader with an insightful guide into the ways that SJWs converge entire organisations, and thereby provides a blueprint for keeping them out of a project or organisation in the first place. He also provides excellent socio-sexual and psychological insights into the ways that SJWs think, and ends the book by arming the reader with ways and methods by which to find, root out, and eliminate SJWs completely.

This book truly is Vox Day’s guide to trench warfare in the modern world, and as such is required reading for every shitlord of any stripe.

4. The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi

In most cases one could argue that it is downright stupid to require people to pay $8 or thereabouts for what is, essentially, an edited collection of blog posts. But in the case of Rollo’s book, which collects wisdom and insights gleaned over at least ten years’ worth of writing, this book is if anything undervalued.

Rollo’s work provides a full guide to human sexual dynamics and, in particular, helps the modern man understand just how messed up today’s Sexual and Marriage Market Places really are. Not content with merely diagnosing the problems, however, Rollo also provides concrete solutions that allow any man who pays attention to them the ability to avoid the dreaded curses of oneitis, Disney programming, and placing women on pedestals. His famous Sexual Market Value graph is fully explained here, and the analytical framework that results from it is unpacked carefully to show the reader how life gets far better for men after they turn thirty- but far worse for women after the same age.

If you haven’t bought a paper copy of book as a gift for a Beta male of your acquaintance, well, in doing so you might just save him from making some very, very bad decisions.

5. Dangerous by MILO

While I find Milo Yiannopoulos’s flamboyantly gay lifestyle to be thoroughly disgusting, I also recognise him for the sheer force of nature that he is. And, as I said of him when the furious storm broke concerning his ill-advised and sloppily worded comments about men having sex with minors (note- minors, not children), he is one of the best allies that we shitlords have in our war for the soul of the West. There is no more effective advocate of free speech out there who is so good at destroying the Left on their own chosen ground. And, while many criticisms can be made of his debating style- he often plays the “it’s just a joke, darling” card when confronted by serious opposition- there is no question that he is incredibly effective.

This book provides the reader with a breakdown of the current struggle for the preservation of civil liberties against an out-of-control and overbearing Left that wants us to think and act only in specific and approved ways. Milo gives that the finger and instead spends the course of the book comprehensively dismantling every last one of the Left’s “arguments” for totalitarian control over the discourse. His solution to the supposed evils of “hate speech” is one that every shitlord can support: let every point of view have its day in the court of public opinion, and trust in the abilities of free individuals to make up their own minds.

While this is certainly not a “classic” book in any way, this is a book that marks a milestone in the culture wars, for it also marks the triumphant return of a man that the Left thought they had destroyed and buried.

HONOURABLE MENTION: Thirty Seven: Essays on Life, Wisdom, and Masculinity by Quintus Curtius

This collection of essays by Marine, lawyer, scholar, writer, and linguist Quintus Curtius is more than merely a bunch of thoughts loosely tied together. It is a set of principles and solid advice for any man, of virtually any age, for how to live a fulfilling and meaningful life. Drawing on the principles of Stoicism and the ancient virtues of the West’s Roman ancestors, Curtius adds his own hard-won wisdom as a leader of men and an advocate for freedom, giving the modern man a path to follow in life when all around him seems murky and confused.

The Didact’s Top 5 Fiction Books of 2017

1. The Heretics of St. Possenti by Rolf Nelson

I have not read The Stars Came Back yet, so I have no idea how the Order of St. Possenti fits into that story, but this book is a prequel, of sorts, to that one. This specific book is set in our day and age, and shows how an order of gun-wielding monks came to be. But, more than that, this book provides some brilliant new ideas about the ways in which several of the most pressing problems confronting men today can be resolved.

Rolf Nelson’s idea amounts to combining faith in the Lord with an understanding that sometimes good men need to take up arms to defend their faith, their loved ones, and their culture from the evil of this world. In the process, Mr. Nelson presents a radical rethinking of the standard monastic order and gives us a blueprint for creating institutions that fill lost men with goals, drives, targets, and ambitions- while instilling in them a reverence for God and His works. This truly is the heresy that we need, and this book gives us all an idea of what life could be like for young men today if they are given direction and purpose- and trained to shoot, fight, and defend what they love.

Brilliantly written, superbly plotted, extremely hard to put down.

2. Dictator: A Novel (Ancient Rome Trilogy) by Robert Harris

I remember reading the first book in this series, Imperium, something like 12 years ago- maybe more- when I was still in university. It has taken Mr. Harris over a decade of research, thinking, writing, and editing to complete probably his best ever work, concerning the life and times of the legendary Roman statesman Cicero.

The whole trilogy is worth reading, but this book, which details the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire under Julius Caesar and his successors, is the best of the bunch, and serves as a worthy ending to a superb trilogy. Cicero is portrayed in all three books through the eyes of his beloved secretary, Tiro, as a noble but flawed man who was unwavering in his love of the ancient Roman governing virtues. Cicero’s life was filled with danger and intrigue, yet the fundamental nobility of the man himself is given deeply respectful treatment here.

Robert Harris brings the ancient history of Rome to vivid, thoroughly imagined life here, and in the process gives us clear warnings about the dangers of power and the realities of human mortality.

3. The Promethean by Owen Stanley

Following up the hysterically funny Missionaries could not have been an easy task, and I am sure that it took all of Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) Vox Day’s guile and persuasive ability to get Dr. Owen Stanley to write another book. Yet he did write it, and while this one is not quite as brilliant as the previous work of wickedly funny satire, it is still a superb effort nonetheless.

The Promethean brings to vivid life the possibility of artificial intelligence in human form, and raises some deep questions along the way of how such an intelligence might perceive and react to its creators. As the book shows, when we create machines with the capacity to reason and learn, they will rapidly outstrip us in our own abilities to do the same and will profoundly alter the way we manage our own lives- but, if we are not careful about how we instruct them and teach them, our own inventions could easily be our undoing.

This book is also a biting commentary on human stupidity, avarice, greed, and short-sightedness, and as such is one of the best thinking man’s fiction books out there.

4. Legionnaire (Galaxy’s Edge Book 1) by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole

As the book’s byline goes: The galaxy is a dumpster fire, and the only people with the skills and the means to put it out are the legionnaires of the Galactic Republic.

Imagine, if you will, the STAR WARS universe if it were written by men who actually understand how a military works, and who are not in the least bit interested in scoring a bunch of virtue-signalling diversity points, and who can actually write good plots, and you have the Galaxy’s Edge series.

And this specific book, the first in the series, sets up the rest of it in truly superb fashion. This is what Star Wars could have been if it were told from the perspective of the ordinary stormtroopers of a benevolent rather than evil Galactic Empire by really competent writers.

5. Young Man’s War (The Thousand Worlds) by Rod Walker

In my opinion the Golden Age of science fiction came to be around the time of Robert A. Heinlein’s peak output, which to me includes his ageless “juveniles” and the immortal classic Starship Troopers. There is a liveliness and a deftness of writing in Heinlein’s best books that nobody before or since has been able to match.

At some point a Gamma male pretender to the throne came long and published the Old Man’s War series under the Tor banner, but those were at best middling-quality ripoffs of the legendary Grandmaster’s work.

It was not until Rod Walker’s first book, Mutiny in Space, was published by Castalia House, that we finally saw the first real candidate for the new New Heinlein come forward. And what a job he has done, too.

This book, like its predecessors by the same author, made me feel the same sense of juvenile adventure that I got from reading Heinlein’s own works for young readers. Weighty, adult ideas are given open consideration in a book that is nonetheless eminently readable for teenage boys. Profanity and sexuality are absent, but tight, compelling storytelling and superb characterisation are fully present and accounted for.

HONOURABLE MENTION: No Gods, Only Daimons (The Covenant Chronicles Book 1) by Kai Wai Cheah

In yet another win for Castalia House, Benjamin Cheah, whose work was featured in the Riding the Red Horse, Vol. 1 anthology from a few years back, wrote his first full-length fiction novel here depicting a world in which magic is real and has been weaponised by various governments around the world. It is a superb read, full of great characters, tightly written plots, and carefully constructed believable alternate worlds similar to our own. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of the Covenant Chronicles as and when they are released.

CLASSIC BOOK OF 2017: The Great Heresies by Hillaire Belloc

This is a book that must be read by anyone who wants to understand how the Christian faith has evolved and splintered over the course of its 2,000-year history. Hillaire Belloc was one of the foremost intellectuals and writers of his day, guided both by his superbly rational mind and his deep and abiding Catholic faith, and he applies all of his powers of historical analysis and reasoning to show the reader how the five great heresies of Christianity came to be, and the profound effects that they had upon the Faith.

Belloc took particular pains to point out that Islam started out as little more than a reform Judaism heresy of Christianity, which rejected most of the New Testament and the divinity of the Lord Christ, while accepting the Old Testament wholesale. Remember, he wrote this some eighty years ago- yet everything that he writes about Islam has since been proven true, repeatedly.

This book is not merely a great work of philosophy. It is a dire warning about the need for faith in a secular age, as the Catholic Church enters the third Millennium in a time of unprecedented stress and change.