50: Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

I tried reading this around sixth or seventh grade and it bored me out of my mind. It's better going now. (Aside: the film Lawrence of Arabia, loosely based on the book, similarly grew in my estimation.)

The parts describing raids or Arab customs are very interesting. The bits about Lawrence's feelings of guilt and his emotions are boring. The politics sections fall somewhere in between. The occasional dry humour comes as a surprise every time.

A nice thought from Book X giving a partial reason for my disgust of soldiers:

Convicts had violence put upon them. Slaves might be free, if they could, in intention. But the soldier assigned his owner the twenty-four hours' use of his body; and sole conduct of his mind and passions. A convict had license to hate the rule which confined him, and all humanity outside, if he were greedy in hate: but the sulking soldier was a bad soldier; indeed, no soldier. His affections must be hired pieces on the chess-board of the king.

In terms of lay-out, the 1936 Doubleday edition I picked up at Cal's Books in Redding is brilliant. The paper is nice, the font readable, and the header of each page contains a few word summary of that page and the date in the war covered, not the common and useless author and title of the whole work.