Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie mysteries - hilarious stories about a PI and his dog, told from the dog's point of view.

While I enjoy Hans Zimmer's soundtracks, his themes are rather persistent as well. E.g. Pirates of the Caribbean I (a variation on something he put in Gladiator first).

Sorry, I wasn't actually referring to a specific Helm's Deep track. I was referring to bits like this that occur throughout the Battle of Helm's Deep. See here for further info.

Actually, I remember the Fellowship theme occurring several times in second movie (e.g. during the pursuit of the Uruk-hai and at Helm's Deep).

That's certainly allowed. Personally, I love Howard Shore's LOTR soundtrack because of his use of the Wagnerian leitmotif idea in his score. Shore represents the important elements of the story — characters, objects, ideas — as musical themes or motives (leitmotif = "leading motive") in the score, and then uses these themes to expand and comment on the developing action. Once you have identified the various themes, it become very interesting to see how they are woven together to tell the story.

Many of my favorites have already been covered.
I'm a big  Michael Giacchino fan (Pixar soundtracks and J.J. Abrams films).

Perhaps I missed it, but has anyone mentioned Henry Mancini?

• The Pink Panther
•  Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Charade

Joe Hisaishi  (composer for many Hayaou Miyazaki films)

•  Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 
• Castle in the Sky 
•  My Neighbor Totoro
• Princess Mononoke
• Spirited Away
• Howl's Moving Castle

Taro Iwashiro's soundtrack for Red Cliff. If you enjoy foreign epic films, you must see the 5-hour international edition of this movie. In my opinion, this is the Chinese equivalent to The Iliad with battle scenes that are every bit as stunning as anything you saw in LOTR. More information on the movie and soundtrack  can be found here.

The Good, the Bad, and the Weird 

I subscribe to National Review, Claremont Review of Books, and Touchstone Magazine.

Since I haven't seen it mentioned previously, I must particularly bring to your attention the merits of Touchstone Magazine: A Journal of Mere Christianity. It is a Christian cultural journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom —Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. Its editors and contributors include the likes of Anthony Esolen, Robert P. George, and Allan Carlson.

Yes, NR's print edition is completely different content from NRO. E.g. you will not find Rob Long's column "The Long View" or James Lilek's column "Athwart" as free online content. Here's the table of contents for the latest issue - https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/issues/349668.

It was a great pleasure to meet all of you! Kudos to RushBabe for organizing it! I doubt I'll make it to another Seattle meetup in the near future, but be sure to drop in on me if you're ever out at Hillsdale while I'm in grad school.

The meetup was fantastic! Thanks for joining us, Dave! It was a pleasure to finally meet all of you!

It was great to hang out with all of you! I'm sorry that I had to take off after only a few hours!

I'll be there!

If Satyricon is not enough Petronius for you, I highly recommend Quo Vadis, in which he is a main character. I recently finished listening to it, courtesy of Audible.com. 

Kahlua milkshake
2 oz Kahlua
2 scoops of vanilla (or chocolate) ice cream
Splash of milk

Or, if I'm feeling fancy, milkshake with Kahlua, Bailey's, and Frangelico. Yum! 

This looks like something that Bertie Wooster would try to pull off. I would love to see Jeeves's face!

Thank you for this post. I have been an admirer of Donald Kagan ever since I read On the Origins of War and Preservation of Peace for History of the Western World I & II during my freshman year at Patrick Henry College. It is interesting to learn about his intellectual journey since the 1960s. I'm sure he will be sorely missed at Yale. Do you know whether he plans to continue to write?