Reading
Finished reading: In the Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley. The pre-Socratics as you’ve never seen them before. (Plato & Aristotle are the villains.) 📚
Finished reading: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. A much stranger & more interesting book than I remembered! 📚
Currently reading: Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth 📚
Between the bookstore, Bandcamp, & the good ol’ USPS, Christmas came early for me today! 🎶📚
Currently reading: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow 📚
Currently reading: In Search of Lost Time, Volume II by Marcel Proust 📚
Currently reading: The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han 📚
Finished reading: Frost: Poems by Robert Frost.
I don’t think I ever really realized how powerful & profound Frost is—until this reading. The simplicity of his diction both masks & reveals a vision of strange, silent, often terrifying loneliness, along with rare moments of profound connection with other people & the natural world. I will be returning to Frost much more regularly in the future. 📚
Finished reading: The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han.
Provocative in the first half; unsatisfying in the second. Han is laser-focused on the core problems of modernity but his books are so short they feel, at times, perfunctory. 📚
Currently reading: In Search of Lost Time, Volume II by Marcel Proust 📚
Currently reading: Frost: Poems by Robert Frost 📚
Currently reading: The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han 📚
Finished reading: The Poisoned King by Katherine Rundell 📚
I recently finished Katherine Rundell’s wonderful new volume in her Impossible Creatures series and had to write a few words about it. In short, I doubt there’s a better week for it to have been released. If you could use some hope, this is one place to find it. 📚
Cannot wait to dive into this one! I had to fend off two small but voracious children to preserve my claim. Fortunately I was up to the task. 💪📚
Currently reading: The Poisoned King by Katherine Rundell 📚
Currently reading: All Things Are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart 📚
Finished reading: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi.
Some books feel like they’re written just for you. This one has some sections that I really needed to think through while reflecting on my life, the assumptions I tend to make about myself, & the way the world works in general.
Plus, I enjoyed learning about Alfred Adler, who was part of the same Vienna circle as Freud and his disciple Jung—but who reached very different conclusions about the human person & the role of psychology. 📚
Currently reading: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi 📚