The National Review, on occasion. An attempt to understand the brain wiring of as many points of view as I can.

We should engage with these texts. I disagree with them, and I argue back against them, but I don’t think that means they shouldn’t be read and thought about.

It’s short. About 50 pages. I don’t agree with everything she says because, despite her interlocutor and friend being homosexual, she makes a few homophobic comments. I chose this book because it’s witty and fun, it raises some fundamental questions about the nature of love, and also it’s a fascinating insight into society at the time.

Writers we think are all wrong and want to read anyway come in two kinds: those who are good writers and bad thinkers — Christopher Hitchens, Norman Podhoretz, and Gore Vidal, each in his terribly different way, are instances of that — and those who may not be original stylists but who we admire for trying to be better thinkers than they were before, stumbling toward truth from a starting place very different from the one we happened to inherit. I disagree, for instance, with David Frum about almost everything, from Iraq to the legacy of Pierre Trudeau in our native Canada, but never doubt his integrity or desire to tell the truth about the world.