Which of the best books did you read this year?

One of the scabrous satirical prints directed against Pope after his Dunciad of 1727. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Surveying this year’s “best books” lists to see which ones I’d read (none, it turns out), I was reminded of a long-ago conversation.

Teaching English in Mexico, one of my students was a businessman whose concentration on engineering meant that his education in the liberal arts was largely self-taught. Being an intellectually curious man bent on self-improvement, he told me he only rea...