First was Osprey Men-at-Arms #153: Napoleon's Guard Infantry 1. Once again, this is primarily a resource for someone building a miniatures set, and was otherwise not all that interesting.
Second was much better. This one was John Scalzi's compilation of blog posts, called Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. Whether or not I agreed with his positions in some of his posts, I found it very readable, and thought-provoking.
And so we quickly slip into a new year, and a new challenge...