I’ve spent Christmas and the New Years up at the acreage; my bees are happily buzzing around when it’s warm, and hiding when it isn’t. This is their nature. Mine is apparently to hide away in a cabin, emerging to walk my dogs, write occasionally, read a lot, and just kind of luxuriate in having the entire week off. It’s been nice. I have mentioned before that I keep a thread on mastodon of every book I read during the year, updating it as soon as is feasible after finishing each one, with a sentence or two about them, and I thought it would be fun to revisit the list from last year.
I note that I didn’t originate this practice, a friend of mine did it for a while; he seems to have stopped, which is a shame, because I actually read a book or two he posted. I’ve added a few more thoughts to some of the entries. Those are in italics. I have also corrected some typos in them, because there’s no need to preserve typos.
“Mrs. Dalloway” – Virginia Woolf. Probably the least favorite Woolf book I have read, but that means it still stands head and shoulders over most things I read. A deeply human story, written as only Woolf could.
“How to Read Wittgenstein” – Ray Monk. It does what it says on the tin. Monk wrote the skull-cracker of a biography I read late last year. It may be time for me to stop reading *about* Wittgenstein, and read some Wittgenstein.
“Technic and Magic” – Federico Campagna. A work of two halves, the first half posits our present world, the second half attempts to create a way out of it. I thought it leaned too heavily on mysticism, but it’s not *dumb*, if that makes any sense.
“The Aesthetics of Music” – Roger Scruton. A joyless slog. Scruton does make some interesting points, but he is also an irritating toff. Huge sections of the book are weighed down with classicist examples, and while Scruton does tackle some of the big issues, by the end, you’re just reading someone with a proudly closed mind.
I keep wanting to be kinder to Scruton, he’s not a terrible thinker, but his politics were awful, and he really comes across as a toff. Also, there are a large number of examples in the book from the opera “Wozzeck”, which I personally find miserable. Sorry, Roger. If it helps, I have a couple more of your books in my TBR.
“House of Chains”- Steven Erikson. I always pick up this series for “a break” and I forget how goddamned LONG these books are. They are good, and this one begins picking up some of the threads from the first three, but what is a “quick read” turns into “a whole thing”, especially with school going on.
“Scorch Atlas”- Blake Butler. I wanted to like this, as gross apocalypses are my jam, but this was all image, no there. Some good writing in service of… not a lot. I suspect younger me would have been kinder to this.
“Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” – Ludwig Wittgenstein. I reached the end of this. I didn’t finish it. No one has.
This is overly glib, I know, but honestly, it’s fake twitter. I really enjoyed the class I read this for, and I won’t lie that ol’ Ludwig has me thinking a fair bit. He’s become the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl for me; which is a metaphor he likely would asked me to clarify until one of us went insane.
“Bertrand Russell : The Spirit of Solitude” – Ray Monk. Volume 1 of Monk’s two volume biography of Russell, there’s a LOT about Russell being a horny nerd; interesting to note how much his encounters with Wittgenstein fucked up his philosophy career. It’s a solid read for those with interest in the subject. I can’t imagine what it took to put this together.
“Right Wing Women” – Andrea Dworkin. Dworkin is more talked about than read, and I am glad I took the time to do so. She’s a difficult read, and you may object to several things she says, but her arguments are clear, thought through, and researched.
Still glad I read this one; I keep thinking I will read another, but I doubt it.
“Open Socrates” – Agnes Callard. Good, but I found it a very uneven read. It made me re-think Socrates, which is the goal, so it’s successful; parts of it felt kind of meandering and dull. The last chapter, on death, is excellent.
I remember very little about the substance of this one; obviously I liked the last chapter, but I can’t tell you what it said now. So, not a lot of lasting impact.
“Bertrand Russell : The Ghost of Madness” – Ray Monk. Volume two of Monk’s masterful biography of a deeply, deeply flawed person whose genius left him and who left behind a legacy of …. Shitheadedness. It’s a solid read, but a difficult one, meticulously researched and thoughtful, but deeply sad.
I have a lot of thoughts about this bio even now, but don’t want to sort through them all here; I am surprised at how someone so smart could be so fucking dumb.
“In the Dust of This Planet” – Eugene Thacker. Thacker takes a stab at the philosophical problems that arise if we see the universe as indifferent to us– what happens when nothing has meaning? He also writes about zombies, a little bit. And fog. And ooze.
“The Spy who Loved Me” – Ian Fleming. One of the weirder Bond novels; Bond doesn’t even show up until halfway through it, it’s in first person, and it’s got a very small arc.
“The Spectacle of the Void” – David Peak. Another attempt (like Thacker) to use horror films and literature to illustrate a “horror of philosophy”– how do we cope with our own extinction, or the extinction of “us”? I don’t think Peak is as successful as Thacker, but the book is put together well, and doesn’t go on longer than it needs to.
“Morning and Evening” – Jon Fosse. It’s the first book I have read in ages that made me cry; Fosse is a master, pure and simple.
I will not shut up about Fosse. Read some Fosse, you chumps.
“Starry Speculative Corpse” – Eugene Thacker. The second volume in Thacker’s “Horror of Philosophy” trilogy. More ‘academic’ than the first, Thacker sets out the notion that we may be ruminating on things that do not care we are ruminating on them, a deep kind of cosmic pessimism, and a well written look at it, ta boot.
“Wuthering Heights” -Emily Brontë. A deeply weird and sad book; I am glad I have finally read this one, and hopefully now that fucking song can stop lodging itself in my brain when I pick up the kindle.
“The Burnout Society” – Byung-Chul Han. Lots had been said about this essay/book; I found it as compelling as others have. A solid critique of where we find ourselves today and why.
“I Who Have Never Known Men” – Jacqueline Harpman. An interesting read; I found it a little thin, but worth the time nonetheless. I might be a little old for it? Hard to say, but I’d recommend it nonetheless.
“The Gospel in Brief” – Leo Tolstoy. My history with Christianity is a complex one, but this is a lovely reminder that there is some good in it. Tolstoy strips out the miracles (for the most part), leaves in the teachings, and explains his own faith to some degree.
“The Terror” – Dan Simmons. It’s been a relief to read something purely for fun, but I found this uneven, and the ending a slog. Ahh well. I have a plane ride coming up and some fun books for it as well.
“Philosophical Investigations” – Ludwig Wittgenstein. We did not have to read all of this for class, but I am a completionist. I’m not even entirely certain you are meant to read this in a conventional sense; I wish we’d spent more time with it in an academic setting, but I am glad to have taken some more time with it.
I need to revisit this one; Wittgenstein’s private language argument drives me fucking bats, but I can’t think of a coherent way of refuting it.
“Tentacles Longer than Night” – Eugene Thacker. Thacker concludes his Horror of Philosophy trilogy by musing on reading horror books as philosophical ones; an interesting take. These books are for a weirdly specific audience and I am here for that.
“Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” – Shunryu Suzuki. A collection of Suzuki’s lectures on Zen, a quite beautiful book which made me long for the days I spent at the Zen Center in Palo Alto.
I still miss those days; I tried sitting in New Orleans, but was uncomfortable with the crowd. I guess that should be something I should overcome, you know, in Zen fashion, but it felt clique-y. If I have something approaching a coherent philosophy, it’s fairly Buddhist; our attachments bring us misery. But I will contradict myself on that point.
“On her Majesty’s Secret Service” – Ian Fleming. My favorite of the Bond novels thus far; action, a doomed romance, and the power of 50s sexism all combine for a readable and adventurous romp.
“The Trouble With Being Born” — E.M. Cioran. Too often mistaking brevity for cleverness. I imagine if I had read this at 20, I’d be quoting it insufferably. At 55, it doesn’t offer much.
A lot of people respect this guy; I didn’t see it. I might read something else by him at some point.
“A Brief History of Seven Killings” — Marlon James. I mean, it was good, but it was also overlong. James is touching on a lot, and I couldn’t help but wonder if narrowing the focus would have helped me enjoy it more. Won the Man Booker, so someone liked it a lot.
“The Gone World” – Tom Sweterlitsch. It was fine, and did what it said in the tin. Kept me company over a long flight.
I note I am overly fond of the phrase “does what it says on the tin” when describing things. I blame Roger Ebert, who frequently judged movies based on that criteria. He was, of course, a much better writer than I, and managed to say “does what it says on the tin” a lot more creatively.
“Beyond Good and Evil” – Friedrich Nietzsche. I hated reading this, and am glad to see the back of it. Maybe I’ll elaborate at some point, but right now I am going to read literally anything else.
I have a visceral dislike of Nietzsche, some of it based on the fact that his name is fucking hard to spell.
“Old Soul” – Susan Barker. A nice slice of literary horror; I felt it went on a tad longer than it needed to, but I also don’t know what I would have cut (which is why I am not an editor). Worth the time I spent with it, and a genuinely chilling read.
“Monolithic Undertow” – Harry Sword. This book started out with such promise, then became weighed down with hagiographies and weird repetitions of certain words (dronal, parping) and by the time it was over I was ready for it to be.
This really should have been a winner for me, Sword worked very hard to ensure it wasn’t.
“Second Place” – Rachel Cusk. I like the way Cusk writes, but dislike the people she writes about. At least in this case, I think you’re not meant to like at least some of them, which makes this better.
“Cornelius Cardew : A Life Unfinished” – John Tilbury. An exhaustive, lengthy biography of a composer who rejected his most famous work and became a Marxist activist. A fascinating study; and well written as well.
Fun fact, I sent the author of this book an email with a clarifying question, and he actually responded. This is the only time I have done that.
“The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian” – Robert E Howard. A very mixed bag; some fun adventure stories alongside some very quickly written cash grabs. It was overall neat to read this old pulp stuff, but I wouldn’t tell you to do it.
“Jacob’s Room” – Virginia Woolf. As always with Woolf, beautiful prose. Not much more to say about it. At least now.
“In the Jingle Jangle Jungle” – Joel Gion. Gion is the tambourine player for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and what could have been a fascinating read was marred by some crap writing. This thing needed a second pass, badly.
“Logical Dilemmas: the Life and Work of Kurt Gödel” – John W. Dawson, Jr. I don’t know if there are other biographies of Gödel, this one did what it said it would do; the math in it is advanced, and I had to do outside reading to understand it in spots, but it is the biography of a mathematician, so…
“The Beguiled” — Thomas Cullinan. I honestly don’t know what I thought of this. It felt overlong; but I have long been fascinated by the 1971 film of it, and was glad to read the source.
“Neighbors” — Thomas Berger. A deeply odd book, which was made into a film that almost no one remembers. I think I understood what was meant to be happening, but I also didn’t care for it. The fact that someone read this and thought they should make a movie of it is really wild to me.
I keep thinking I will go back and write this entry, but that would likely mean having to sit though Neighbors again, and I really don’t want to. It has an incredibly obtrusive score, and just thinking about it gives me a headache.
“Doppelgänger” — Naomi Klein. An interesting, if not occasionally unfocused look at where we find ourselves today. Well researched.
I also thought it was a bit too long; Klein belabors some of her points.
“The Disappearance of Rituals” — Byung-Chul Han. This one resonated with me more than “The Burnout Society”; though some of the themes are similar, Han’s overall thesis here is a little easier to parse, and I agreed with a lot of what was said.
“Death by Choice” — Masahiko Shimada. A very odd book. I’m glad I read it, it was a unique experience.
“Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language” — Saul Kripke. I liked parts of it, and also, like Wittgenstein, am not sure I grasped it all.The last chapter was the most interesting to me.
“Corneilus Cardew : A Reader” — Cornelius Cardew (and others). Honestly, most of this was a fucking slog. Once Cardew became a Marxist, it seemed to completely dominate all his thought, and everything was somehow eye-rollingly connected to class struggle/the bourgeois/etc. I’m not even sure I disagree with everything, but it was like being cornered at a party by someone, and watching everyone else have fun while they drone on.
“Recollections of Wittgenstein” — Rush Rhees (ed.) This fairly short read had a ton of information about the way Wittgenstein viewed the world, and was filled with insights into his faith. A great read; if you’re curious about the man.
“Middlemarch” — George Eliot. I really loved this; the slow, deliberate sort of thing you can really get lost in, if inclined.
This is the second “book I thought I’d never actually read, but ended up liking”, the other being “Wuthering Heights”. I still think about this one,
“The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’” — JW Rinzler and Lee Unkrich. Exhaustive account of making The Shining; deep insights into Kubrick’s sometimes insane process, and just how wild it is to put a film like that together. Probably a little too obsessive for some, but it’s 100% complete.
“The Magus” — John Fowles. Overstuffed and overlong. It’s interesting in some senses, and I finished it, but I’m not likely to think about it ever again.
“You Only Live Twice” — Ian Fleming. I’m two books shy of reading all the Bond novels, a series I started on a whim on a trip to Thailand; they are all interesting in their own way, Fleming’s contentious relationship with his own character plays against his great research and sense of place. This had a loping front end and a very quick climax. I don’t know if I can recommend these to everyone, but I say it’s worth reading a random one if you enjoy the films, if only to see the differences.
“Slaughterhouse Five” — Kurt Vonnegut. Poo-tee-weet?
“Carpenter’s Gothic” — William Gaddis. A lot easier to follow than “The Recognitions”; a bleak and messy thing, but a worthy read. Maybe a better entry point for the Gaddis curious.
One thing I should have mentioned here is that the book is also filled with a kind of unrelenting tension that few books manage. There’s some funny moments, for sure, but there’s a lot in it that was hard to read because it reminded me of every petty argument I have ever been involved in. From a craft perspective, that’s awesome, from a having to sit through it, not as much.
“Slumberland” — Paul Beatty. Dancing about architecture. But also funny. It never gelled for me, but maybe it’s not meant to? Not my thing, but not a waste of time.
“Ceephay Queen” — Joel Shepherd. Book 8 in this sprawling military sci-fi thingamabob. Shepherd keeps it fast and fun; these books know what they are, and don’t try and be anything else, which I admire.
“Pimp” — Iceberg Slim. Slim could really write; there’s a gift on display here. However, this book is about a vile subject. Slim doesn’t sugarcoat or justify anything, but it’s hard to read about the way he victimized women. It is also filled with outdated slang; it lends it part of the authentic voice it has, but some of it was hard to figure out.
Apparently there’s a glossary for the slang; I didn’t notice it, and it was easy enough to figure out from context. I ended up watching a documentary about Slim; he lead a complicated life, and this book is one facet of that. I have an outside biography of him on my TBR.
“A Voyage to Arcturus” — David Lindsay. There’s no doubt this is creative, but it’s also goofy and tedious. There’s no central thread to hang things on, and the experiment gets tired after a while.
“Reassuring Tales” — T.E.D. Klein. Like any short story collection, some of these will hit harder than others, but the writing is uniformly excellent. A couple of them actually scared me, which is pretty rare when you’re a seasoned horror nerd, so I say well worth it.
That’s it. I have a few book irons in the fire already, including Arno Schmidt’s “Two Novels” and the first book of a different Sci-Fi series, which isn’t too bad, but the title escapes me at present.
I have to return to the real world in a day or two, and I am slated to return to school on the 12th, so I will see how I do with entries this year. I’d like to write a few more than I did this year, but won’t make any promises. Keep on keeping on.
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